Catholic Revert

Tom Ponchak

Tom Ponchak earned a degree in theology and was involved in ministry in the Catholic Church then left the Church for ten years. After spending time as an evangelical pastor he returned to the Church in 2007. Tom is the Director of Adult Faith Formation at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Catholic Church in Carmel, IN, where he lives with his wife Lisa and their six children.

I was born into a strong Catholic home. My family was active in our parish. We attended mass in a church that my great grandfather helped to build. I was an altar boy for ten years. My father was a lector, extraordinary minister of the Eucharist, and parish council president. Every week our family occupied the first pew at the front of the church. I was active in my high school youth group. I spent time during my senior year of high school and freshman year of college discerning whether I was called to the priesthood. I attended the Franciscan University of Steubenville to study theology. My academic advisor was none other than famous Catholic convert, Dr. Scott Hahn. After graduating from college I worked as a parish youth minister and a high school religion teacher.

And then I left the Catholic Church.

Reflecting on that time of my life now I often wonder what I was thinking. At the time I felt so sure about the decision. I didn’t leave over disagreements with doctrine. I wasn’t put off by the moral teachings of the Church; in fact, my wife, Lisa, and I continued practicing Natural Family Planning the whole time we were away from the Church. I think my reasons were much more personal and complex. I’ll admit to some rationalizing and over thinking of certain things.

Franciscan University, for those who may not be familiar with the school, is a dynamically Catholic institution. It is not your typical Catholic college. The large majority of students, faculty and staff fully embrace their Catholic faith. There are three daily masses on campus that are well attended. Perpetual Eucharistic adoration is held in a chapel that is a replica of the one built by St. Francis of Assisi. They hold monthly Festivals of Praise, an evening of charismatic praise and worship, to a packed house. Most of the students participate in households, small Christian communities in the dorms similar to fraternities. To say that attending Franciscan University is an intense spiritual, as well as academic, experience is an understatement.

I married Lisa a week after graduation and we immediately we moved to Maryland after I accepted a position as a youth minister of an affluent suburban parish. It was culture shock. We came from such a nourishing, faith-filled community to a place where we received condescending looks (and comments) for getting pregnant during our first year of marriage because we didn’t have the common sense to use contraception. The associate pastor frequently preached a self-help gospel and shared his views that there was no such thing as personal sin and that we really just need to learn to accept ourselves as we are from the pulpit. Spiritual development of the youth was less important than making sure everyone was having fun and feeling good. Meanwhile, we were being neglected by the very parish we came to serve. Lisa had a very difficult pregnancy and we ended up in the hospital for several multi-day stays to combat preterm labor. Not once did we receive a visit from any of the clergy, nor did anyone at the parish office ask how we were doing. Rather, I received a lecture about the importance of being available for coffee and donuts after Sunday masses - while my wife was hospitalized!

We struggled to find any type of community with Catholics who took their faith seriously and not just something done out of obligation. It was hard and painful. Still we were convinced that ministry was our calling. After a year in Maryland we moved to Michigan. I was hired as one of three new religion teachers at the only Catholic high school in the diocese. The prior religion teachers had been relieved of their duties for not being “Catholic enough.” The diocese was looking for teachers who would teach sound, orthodox doctrine and clearly articulate the Church’s moral teachings. For me it sounded like a great fit, and I truly loved teaching. I was able to continue working with young people and trying to impart to them my own zeal for the faith.

Unfortunately, our experience at the local parishes was not as positive. Once again, Lisa and I were longing for community, for a group of peers we could share our lives with and encourage one another in our faith. This continued to prove to be more difficult than we thought. The parishes we attended in town had few young adults. I ran into stubborn opposition from people in leadership in the parishes when trying to help with youth ministry programs. I was actually told by one parish committee person that the goal for youth ministry should be to “create a fun atmosphere so that after these kids leave the Church when they’re in college maybe they’ll remember that they had fun and come back when it’s time to have their kids baptized.”

After three years of looking, but not finding, community and being frustrated at every turn while trying to do ministry both my wife and I were definitely at a low point. We doubted that we would ever be able to do the kind of ministry we felt so strongly that God was calling us to do. We doubted that we would be able to find other committed Catholics who had a real relationship with Jesus and were truly interested in spiritual growth. We were convinced that we needed to find some way of feeding these needs that were not being met in the Church. In September 1996 we reached out to a local non-denominational church that was part of a national fellowship of charismatic, evangelical churches. We met with the pastor and explained that we weren’t looking to leave the Catholic Church, but wanted to hang out with his community for fellowship. It seemed like the perfect fit, we could still attend mass on Sundays and join a small fellowship group during the week that met at the pastor’s house.

We quickly felt a connection with the people gathering for this small group every week. Some were former Catholics, others had come from mainline Protestant denominations, and some had no prior church background at all. When we gathered we focused on how to apply our faith to our lives. People took their faith seriously and were deeply committed to each other and their church. There was a genuine interest in what was going on in each other’s lives from the joys to the struggles, from blessings to needs. Lisa and I immediately felt welcomed and loved. At last we had found a group of fellow believers who we could relate to on a spiritual level and who accepted and support us.

At the same time things continued to be frustrating at our parish and at my job. I always began my religion classes with prayer and would often go around the room asking the students for any intentions. One day a sophomore cheerleader asked for prayer because she had sprained her knee and wouldn’t be able to practice with her squad. From my podium I offered up a prayer asking that the Lord heal her knee along with some prayers for other needs in the class. The next day she came to class excited to share that her knee had been healed. The swelling and pain was gone and she was able to do all her cheerleading moves without difficulty. I took advantage of this little “miracle” to encourage my students to have faith that God wants to be involved in their lives and that they can turn to Him even for what they may think are trivial concerns. I reminded them that God is a good Father who wants to give his children good things if we ask.

About a week later I was summoned to the diocesan office to meet with the chancellor of the diocese. It seems that word had spread around the school about the cheerleader and some parents were calling the diocese to complain about religion teachers healing kids in their classrooms. I explained what happened and how I didn’t even think much of the prayer at the time I was praying. I respectfully pointed out that I didn’t heal anyone, but that if God wanted to answer a prayer then there wasn’t much I could do about that. After all, what’s the point of praying for something if you don’t expect your prayers to be answered? The chancellor listened and then politely asked that I stop praying for healings in my classroom lest anyone be offended or upset! He did allow for the formation of an after school club for such things, but insisted that this had no place in the classroom. At the same time my new evangelical community was asking me to help their church with forming a youth group to guide their teens in becoming disciples and maturing in their faith. The contrast could not have been more obvious.

Christmas of 1996 would be the last time we attended mass. We weren’t quite ready to fully commit to joining this new faith community, but we had grown so tired of the politics and resistance at our parish that we told ourselves we needed a break. We would read the lectionary readings for the week and share with each other our thoughts on the readings on Sunday mornings and listen to some praise and worship music. We were convinced that God was calling us to doing ministry that was incompatible with the local Catholic community. At first we considered moving, but I couldn’t find a job. Our mid-week small group meetings were a source of encouragement and affirmation. We finally decided to walk away from the Catholic Church on Easter Sunday of 1997 and became members of the evangelical congregation we had been spending time with.

This decision was not taken lightly and was not without cost. I knew I would have to resign as a Catholic religion teacher. I decided to stay on for the final couple months of the school year and then not renew my contract. The last thing we wanted to was cause scandal at the school. No one would need to know why I wasn’t returning. I ended up finding a new job in town as an insurance adjuster. Several of our Catholic friends had found out about our decision and would no longer speak to us. It was as if we were being shunned.

By far the hardest part of that choice was telling my family. There was once a time when I had contemplated becoming a priest and now I was leaving the faith. It was the hardest conversation of my life. There were harsh words exchanged, feelings hurt, and many tears. For years this became a source of division between me and the rest of my family. I had often enjoyed staying up late with my father discussing politics and religion over a cold beer and nice cigar. Now, those conversations were off limits. When we talked it was purely superficial. I could see how much pain it was causing my parents, and yet I was so convinced that we were doing the will of God that it didn’t matter.

Once we got through the initial reactions of our friends and family we began to immerse ourselves into the life of our new faith community. We couldn’t have been happier. We finally felt like we were at home; a supportive community and opportunities for doing ministry without having to fight the system were finally opening up before us. I was immediately entrusted with forming their youth ministry program while Lisa began working at a homeless women’s shelter. I was given the opportunity to preach on Sunday mornings to the entire congregation. We began hosting and leading a young adult small group in our home. In no time I had become one of the leaders of the church.

After a couple of years I was offered a church planting internship in Florida within the same association of churches with which we had been involved. It seemed like perfect, divine timing to move us on to our next stage of ministry. We moved to Florida and joined this new congregation. As an unpaid church planting intern I worked full time as an insurance adjuster, but devoted many hours to helping around the church and learning the responsibilities of being a pastor. Once again Lisa and I were given a great deal of favor and immediately began ministry activities. I was afforded greater opportunities to preach and teach. We started a mid-week alternative worship service that combined praise and worship with discussion and visual arts. I started attending regional and national conferences for this association of churches and writing for an emerging church movement magazine.

It may seem odd, but when we left the Catholic Church we still felt a connection to its theology and liturgy. Although we had become frustrated on a personal level with the people in the Church there was still much that we loved about her. We often found ourselves defending Church teaching against misconceptions and prejudices. I was often drafted into the role of apologist for the Church even as a “former” Catholic. I was able to explain topics like Mary, the saints and infallibility in ways that were disarming and resulted in a better understanding and appreciation of the Catholic Church’s doctrine. We also used some of our Catholic background covertly while doing ministry. We taught lectio divina in our small group and introduced ashes and an Ash Wednesday alternative worship service.

Recently my teenage daughter (who now wants to be a nun) asked me how we could have left the Eucharist during those years. This was obviously a big issue for our Catholic friends and my family as well. It was also one of our biggest hurdles to leaving the Church originally. How we got around that is a lesson in the ability of the human mind to rationalize just about anything. I had a degree in Catholic theology from a doctrinally sound university. I had spent hours in Eucharistic adoration. I taught on the Eucharist as a youth minister and religion teacher. How could I have turned my back on the Eucharistic Lord? I was guilty of idolatry. I had desired ministry as the highest good. I had convinced myself, and my wife, that “doing the stuff” that God was calling us to was the most important thing. At first I told myself that giving up the Eucharist was a necessary sacrifice to be able to reach others with the gospel. Then I started rationalizing away the doctrine of transubstantiation. I told myself that the spiritual is more real than the physical, heaven more real than earth. If I wanted Jesus to be really spiritually present, then all I needed was my faith. I misappropriated Eastern Orthodox theology that emphasized mystery to justify my new found position that Jesus really was present, but we just can’t understand how he is present. All it took was some theological cartwheels backed up by blinded zeal to do the ministry I wanted to do.

After a couple of years of interning and assisting, Lisa and I were commissioned to plant a new church in our current hometown of Lakeland, FL. Finally, we had arrived. Now we could build the kind of church we wanted and do the ministry we wanted without having to answer to anyone but ourselves and our hand-picked leadership team. We named our new church Matthew’s House and intended from the start to be an unconventional church. We wanted to start as a house church and remain as a network of house churches as we grew. We wanted to reach out to people who had been turned off or burned out on traditional church. Our new faith community was soon full of pastors’ kids who had grown up and burnt out in church, faculty and staff from the nearby Assemblies of God affiliated college, and some folks who were ready to give up on church altogether.

We felt more strongly than ever that we needed to incorporate more of what we valued and missed from the Catholic Church. We celebrated communion weekly as I used prayers from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. We followed the liturgical seasons and even liturgical colors for our table cloth and candles. I taught how communion was something more than just a symbol. When our third daughter was born I taught about the sacramental nature of baptism and the validity of infant baptism. To my surprise our ragtag group of burned out evangelicals and Pentecostals fully embraced this teaching. I baptized my daughter and several others in those years secretly using the Catholic Rite of Baptism. We studied the Church Fathers and questioned Sola Fide and Sola Scriptura. We studied the communion of saints. The more we introduced our community to various Catholic and Orthodox theology and practices the more they were interested in it, and the more I began to question what I was doing.

I can remember talking to Lisa one day about the direction we were taking our church. I remember thinking that we were just kidding ourselves, that we really weren’t an evangelical church anymore, at least not by conventional terms. At the same time, we felt a deep responsibility for our community. We couldn’t just walk away from them, but we didn’t know if they would be ready to follow us, or where exactly we were going. We started to look into different denominations that might accept our little faith community. We looked at the Eastern Orthodox, the Evangelical Episcopal Church, and even the Old Catholic Church, a schismatic group that split with Rome after the First Vatican Council. On Easter Sunday 2007 we gathered in our home for our Sunday worship. By now we had grown to two house churches but we gathered together as one for Easter. The newspaper had sent their religion correspondent and a photographer to Matthew’s House the week before and that Sunday’s paper had a full color, above the fold, front page picture and story about us. That was our last Easter away from the Catholic Church.

Lisa and I deeply felt that everything we were trying to do were simply attempts at being Catholic without having the honesty to admit it. More than anything we realized that our rationalizations about Jesus being really present in our communion every week couldn’t have been more untrue. Although everyone in our house church loved our communion service, we knew in our spirits what his sacramental presence was like, and we knew that our attempts at recreating that were woefully inadequate. It was like a light finally went on and we realized our hunger for the Eucharistic presence of the Lord. It became an all-consuming desire; we had to return to the Eucharist. We met with the leadership team of Matthew’s House and told them we were stepping down as pastors and returning to the Catholic Church. No one was surprised to hear the news and they all blessed us and encouraged us. When we told those who were meeting in our home they were likewise very supportive. In fact, one family decided to join the local Orthodox Church saying they couldn’t go back to a Protestant one (they just couldn’t agree to the papacy). A young adult from our group decided to become Catholic and I had the honor of being his sponsor. Finally another family also expressed a desire to join the Church. I was allowed to be their RCIA instructor, but they moved out of town before finishing their formation.

Since coming back to the Church we’ve had our share of ups and downs, but I believe that the time we spent away from the Church has given us a fresh perspective and deeper love for her. We learned many lessons with important applications as individual believers and, I believe, for the Church at large. I think the Church is missing opportunities to keep Catholics, call back those who have left, and attract others who are searching for spiritual meaning. I also believe that too many fall into the trap of believing that following God’s will means trying to find out what God wants you to do, rather than becoming who God wants you to be.

I love sharing my love for Christ in and through his Church with others. I love getting my fellow Catholics excited about their faith. Both my wife and I have become actively involved in our parish. We’ve been blessed to help with a dynamic young adult ministry and a Eucharistic adoration ministry that combines adoration with praise, worship and meditation. We’ve even started our own speaking ministry to share our love for Christ and the Church with others. I only hope my story and the lessons I learned can become a blessing for others and for the Church.

Evangelical Convert

Adam Crawford

A lifelong Protestant, Adam came home to the Catholic Church when he was 39 years old. He currently lives in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in Northern California with his wife of 20 years Missy, and their three boys. Adam also blogs at his site, A Faith-Full Life.

Your Starting Point Doesn’t Always Determine Your Conclusion…

Part One - Context

A pastor friend who had heard of my conversion to Catholicism cautioned me that, “Your starting point always determines your conclusion.” Often this is a maxim that I would wholeheartedly agree with. I too have recognized that frequently a faulty conclusion is indeed the result of an erroneous starting point. This certainly seems to be a maxim that can be applied to many endeavors involving human reason and logic – endeavors such as science, mathematics, philosophy, and theology. And yet, while this maxim seems to generally hold true, there are exceptions to the rule. In science for instance, one starts with a hypothesis (starting point) which often must be abandoned during the course of research, since your research may lead you to a very different conclusion indeed. In theology and religion, these exceptions to the rule are most often referred to as conversions – i.e. people whose starting point (like Saul of Tarsus) very much does not determine their conclusion!

Having said that, I wanted to start by providing a bit of context for my conversion story. I was extremely fortunate to be raised in a Christian home by parents who did an excellent job of acquainting me with the Holy Scriptures. Our Christian faith was a very central part of our life and identity as a family. Within our faith, I was exposed to both ends of the spectrum so to speak, both to legalistic and fundamentalist churches that were very dogmatic and certain about everything, and also to more “regular” denominations that were very certain about some things (the necessity of speaking in tongues) but not so certain about others (predestination vs. free will). Over the years, we attended various denominational and non-denominational churches, but they were all characterized by the idea that the bible alone was our only basis for truth, faith, morals, and authority. Many of these churches also tended to interpret Scripture in very literal terms.

Nevertheless, I frequently found myself at odds with the accepted theological beliefs of our Christian friends, many of whom could probably be best described as Evangelical Fundamentalists. As a result, I frequently felt that my own views bordered on the “unorthodox”, leading me to feel that I struggled with issues of faith more than most. In particular, starting when I was about seventeen, I really began to struggle with the idea of the Bible alone. I couldn’t seem to get a good answer as to where this idea had come from or more importantly where the Bible asserted this doctrine. I found myself at odds with the doctrine of sola Scriptura for primarily logical reasons. If it is, “the Bible and the Bible alone” then where does the Bible make this claim? If anything when I studied the Bible I found that it seemed to argue against this idea as it was full of times when God spoke both through direct revelation, and also times when He spoke through others (prophets, priests, judges, kings, etc.) to His people. In Scripture I saw that God revealed Himself through His creation, through His incarnate Son who dwelt among us, through the disciples who, “handed on … what [they] had in turn received:1” (oral tradition), through His Church, etc. Obviously this revelation was inscripturated and preserved for those of us who came later, and Scripture is indeed God’s revelation to us, but this was never the primary means by which God choose to reveal Himself. In other words, He didn’t, with the notable exception of the Ten Commandments, choose to simply drop a written users manual from heaven in order to communicate with us – and even that didn’t end up working so well!

I also encountered many of the problems that come along with a very literalistic interpretation of Scripture. For example, most of the churches we attended failed to take into account the fact that the Bible is ancient Near Eastern literature and comprises a wide variety of literary types. Many pastors also forgot that the author may have intended a meaning that has nothing to do with our modern context. Additionally, I struggled with the ideas of faith alone, faith as somehow opposed to science, and especially the lack of agreement over countless different doctrines. Everyone seemed to understand Scripture in a different way, and it profoundly disturbed me that there seemed to be no way to know with any certainty what the bible meant about anything. The only “solution” proposed for this problem was to learn to accept it. To me this was no solution, and left only a gnawing frustration. The Bible was asserted to be our only guide for all matters of faith and morals, and yet no one agreed on what it meant, and no one else seemed to find this particularly problematic. I wouldn’t have categorized any of these issues as being fundamentally Protestant versus Catholic at that point, as I honestly had very little notion of what Catholics believed. I have since discovered that almost all of what I thought I knew of Catholicism was either flat out wrong, or very misleading.

I should clarify that I bear no ill will towards any of those churches or their people; on the contrary, many of my closest friends, people who are unquestionably fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, are still Protestant. Having said that, I always felt that I stood very much at the fringe in these communities with questions that no one had good answers for. Since I didn’t have any frame of reference at that point to categorize any of these issues as Protestant vs. Catholic, I wound up thinking that these were issues that I had with Christianity in general - issues that most other Christians didn’t share. I felt that my faith was lacking and my views were “unorthodox” Christian views without realizing that they were probably more accurately unorthodox Protestant views. As it turns out, many of my views are entirely orthodox from a Catholic perspective!

When I was nineteen I went to bible college for a year at Western Baptist College in Salem (now Corbin College) with my fiancé, where I majored in youth ministry. The next year we were married, and I quit bible school to work to pay off the bills we had accrued after one year of private Christian college – around $40k for the both of us – and that was 20 years ago! I continued to pursue my theological study on my own, going through countless Protestant theology books and slowly trying to piece together my “own” beliefs out of all the competing theories. I did a lot of study through my early adulthood and was very confident when it came to the claims of Christ, but on countless other issues I kept ending up with different conclusions than everyone else when it came to our faith. I would sit very quietly any time creationism came up for instance because I had views which, from a fundamentalist mindset, would potentially call into question my very salvation. I also found that I had a much greater respect for communion than many of the Christians I worshipped with; for them communion was merely symbolic, and often times entirely optional or only partaken of very erratically. The more I studied Scripture, especially the Bread of Life discourse in John 6, the more I was convinced that there was something more going on - something that wasn’t merely symbolic.

And, increasingly I was becoming more and more uncomfortable with the implications of Scripture as the only measuring stick that we used. Scripture was used to justify everything in peoples lives from their unwise life decisions regarding jobs and finances, to their multiple divorces and remarriages, or even their homosexuality. I’m not saying that we don’t all make mistakes and bad choices, I was just bothered when God and the Bible got blamed for all of them. I also noticed that even when Scripture was interpreted by those who were honestly trying to follow God and to submit to Scripture’s authority in their lives, they invariably arrived at very different conclusions from one another. In other words far from Scripture being the “final authority” it really just opened the floodgates for division and a lack of certainty within the church.

This division within the church – especially when it came to our inability to even agree on what constituted salvation, has always bothered me tremendously. Gradually, I gravitated more and more towards “Bible churches” like Calvary Chapel, and non-denominational churches that refused to take a stand on anything that could be considered remotely divisive, but fundamentally sought to bring people into a personal relationship with Christ. This could be both good (less divisiveness), and bad (a lessened ability to proclaim truth). They basically taught a “relationship with Christ” as the penultimate truth – the only truth which really mattered (No Creed but Christ). Many of the “Bible churches” and non-denominational churches could probably be best summed up by the statement, “Just me, my bible, and Jesus.”

This resulted in churches that were very uncertain about almost everything doctrinally. Churches where no one could say for sure that this is what the Scriptures mean when they said ___________. Churches that tended to start with the assumption that as mere men it was presumptuous for us to think that we as finite beings could be “certain” about the Infinite. And, there is an element of truth to this. God is Infinite and Uncreated, Triune in nature, too Numinous, too Holy, and beyond our comprehension. But ultimately this overall lack of certainty on much of the Protestant side results in the statement, “We can’t really know for sure” or perhaps, “We can’t agree with any degree of certainty on what ought to be sure.” And I was told that we had to be okay with that, because that is the way things are. In fact, those who were most certain about any given doctrine were looked down on as being arrogant and legalists – which often times they were!

Through the years that followed, it seems as if I was always involved in ministry of one kind or another, and as I said, I really enjoyed studying theology and especially teaching others. We moved to Boise, Idaho when I was around thirty, and got involved with a small non-denominational church in Kuna, Idaho called New Beginnings. Our time at New Beginnings was wonderful! Where previously my learning and growth had always been largely up to my own studies and discipline (or lack thereof) I now found myself in a community of believers where I was actually being taught and challenged by others. Many of those in leadership were involved in some manner with Boise Bible College, and one of the founding pastors was a professor there. During our time there, I had the opportunity to take un-accredited classes through Boise Bible college for around two and a half years and I was asked to move into a ministerial role serving as one of the pastors at the church. Feeling led by God to move towards ministry as a full time vocation, I even applied and was accepted into a Masters of Divinity Program through Fuller Seminary. Due to my previous individual studies and my ministerial experience they were willing to make a special provision for me in spite of the fact that I hadn’t completed an undergraduate degree. I was definitely moving along in a certain direction, and for me that direction did not include the Catholic Church!

Part Two - Catholicism and the Reformation

Before moving on I should note that I’ve always been fairly anti-Catholic. Growing up I was raised in a context that was dubious about whether or not Catholics were even saved, and I was even exposed to the occasional fundamentalist who was convinced that the Catholic Church was the beast of Revelation and the Pope was the anti-Christ! If you had suggested to me a few years ago that I would ever be considering a conversion to Catholicism I would have literally laughed in your face. I had not the faintest inkling that the Catholic Church was even a remote consideration. I would have thought it about as likely that I would convert to Islam or Judaism. If asked, I would have probably allowed that there were “real” Christians in the Catholic Church, but probably more at a uninformed lay level, i.e. the people of “simple faith in Christ” who were being led astray by those higher-ups within the Catholic hierarchy.

There was, however, a gradual softening in my attitudes to towards Catholicism over the years. Even as early as junior high I had talked with a gymnastics coach of mine who was a strong Catholic and asked him about prayers offered to Mary and the saints. I was surprised, even at twelve, to find a very reasonable answer given and one I couldn’t easily refute. From that point on prayer to the saints wasn’t something which I personally practiced, but I had begun to understand it and no longer viewed it as “wrong.” Additionally, I had believers in my life who began to expose me to the writings of people like Henri Nouwen, Thomas Aquinas, Thomas Merton, and others. I began to realize that some of the authors whom I most admired and who had influenced me the most were either Catholics themselves, or very Catholic in their theology like C.S. Lewis who was a member of the Anglican Church.

As I began to read these Catholic authors, theologians, and philosophers, I discovered that not only were they “Christian” (to my great surprise!) but in many cases profoundly so. They were, in fact, some of the most deeply committed Christians, insightful theologians, and brilliant philosophers I had yet been exposed to. This didn’t change my mind on Catholicism, but it definitely began to soften my previously superior attitude. This exposure in fact softened my anti-Catholic views to the point where I began to suspect the reverse of my earlier position. Namely, that at the “higher levels” of Catholicism there were perhaps some of the very best Christian theologians, apologists, and philosophers. I continued to feel however, that large portions of the Catholic laity didn’t necessarily share this deeper understanding of Christianity. This is sadly probably the case with not just the Catholic Church, but most of church-going Christians in general. As I continued to study Catholicism with a progressively more open attitude I was very surprised to find that much of what I thought I knew about Catholic belief was either flat out wrong, didn’t do justice to the nuances of the position, or was based on “straw-man” arguments. I also discovered that many of the authors I had been reading were converts to the faith. Men like G.K. Chesterton, Peter Kreeft, and Cardinal John Henry Newman who once famously said, “To be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant.” While I am not sure that this is a maxim that would apply to everyone, it was certainly true in my case.

I decided to teach a Church history class at the church I was pastoring at. I wanted to teach it at a collegiate level, and to try and cover a period of time from Christ thru the present in about sixteen weeks of one hour classes plus homework for the students. I wanted to tie each portion of Church history to a particular Christian of that period who had really made a difference in the life of the church. My goal was to give attendees some familiarity with the heroes of the faith since the time of Christ – to provide positive role models who would hopefully inspire our congregation to live lives of heroic virtue themselves. I didn’t think of these “heroes” as saints, nor did I realize that this idea, this communion of saints, was a deeply Catholic one. It was an ambitious undertaking, especially for me as I had never really studied Church history in any sort of intensive way. All of my studies of Church history up to that point had either been broad overviews, or very thorough studies of particular aspects of Church history such as the Reformation, or the early American Revivals. Like most Protestants, for me Church history began in Acts and then in some vague and indefinite way “veered off course” around the time of Constantine. Then there were even vaguer interludes of crusades and inquisitions, with Church history thankfully resuming some 1500 years after Christ with the Protestant Reformation. I had, of course, been acquainted with snippets of Augustine and Aquinas, but had never really understood them to be Catholic. I spent countless hours preparing to teach my class and reading multiple Protestant books on the history of the church. As I studied, for the first time it came home to me that, for the first 1,500 years of Christianity – for fully three quarters of all Christian history – to be Christian was to be Catholic.

All the early church fathers, saints, theologians, etc. were Catholic. There was no other expression of the church until the time of the Protestant Reformation in the 16th and 17th centuries. I know that it’s kind of dumb, but this floored me. I had never taken the time to consider it from an intellectual perspective before. From the time of Christ until some 400 years ago there was no question as to whether Catholic theology, teaching, and practice were an authentic expression of Christianity – they were the only expression of Christianity which existed. I shouldn’t say no question, because there have always been heretics and dissenters to the true faith, but heresies aside, the Church was one, holy, apostolic and Catholic until very recently in her history. I will readily admit that reform was needed within the Catholic Church during the time of the Protestant Reformation; but in reality the Church is always and in every age in need of reform because she is composed of sinners such as myself. It is a historical fact, however, that Luther didn’t intend to leave the Catholic church but to reform it. Furthermore, his excommunication from the Catholic Church was for his heresy - not his efforts at reformation. Consider the following quote from Luther himself:

“That the Roman Church is more honored by God than all others is not to be doubted. St, Peter and St. Paul, forty-six Popes, some hundreds of thousands of martyrs, have laid down their lives in its communion, having overcome Hell and the world; so that the eyes of God rest on the Roman church with special favor. Though nowadays everything is in a wretched state, it is no ground for separating from the Church. On the contrary, the worse things are going, the more should we hold close to her, for it is not by separating from the Church that we can make her better. We must not separate from God on account of any work of the devil, nor cease to have fellowship with the children of God who are still abiding in the pale of Rome on account of the multitude of the ungodly. There is no sin, no amount of evil, which should be permitted to dissolve the bond of charity or break the bond of unity of the body. For love can do all things, and nothing is difficult to those who are united.2”

And this is precisely where I began to have my own problems, because when I began to take a hard look at the five solae of the Protestant Reformation - the reasons which the Protestants gave for leaving the Catholic Church - I found that I disagreed with most of them.

I’ve already covered some of my objections to sola Scriptura, but as a side note, it seems telling that even the fathers of the Reformation who believed in a doctrine of Scripture alone still felt it necessary to write extensively on how to properly interpret Scripture so as to arrive at the same conclusions that they did. For instance, have you ever tried to get through all of Calvin’s institutes?! It was around this time that I came across an interesting quote from the Orthodox Church in America.

“…the Orthodox Church does not accept the notion that everyone can properly interpret the Bible as he or she wants. Some Protestant bodies believe in this, but Orthodoxy does not. We say that the Church has the ability to properly interpret Scripture, and this means that we should study and adopt the interpretations that have been handed down over the 2000 years of the Church’s living history. Given the fact that that which is contained in Scripture is the inspired word of God, revealed to mankind and not to a single individual, no individual has the right or ability to offer ‘the’ definitive interpretation of Scripture.3”

I also took issue with Luther’s teachings on sola fide – by faith alone. Justification by faith alone without the necessity of good works seems to contradict the vast majority of Scriptural teaching on the subject. This contradiction between Luther’s theology and Scriptural teaching was emphasized by Luther’s addition of the word “alone” to St. Paul’s declaration in Romans 3:28 that it is by faith that we are justified, and his desire to entirely remove the book of James (which he labeled an Epistle of straw) due to it’s assertion that faith without works is dead. This seemed to be a very inconsistent position for someone who had just affirmed the sufficiency and authority of Scripture alone for all matters of faith and morals!

My problems continued with the doctrine of sola gratia or “grace alone.” Contrary to Catholic teaching that man can cooperate with the graces given him by God, and that works done in Christ can have value; Luther taught that man cannot by any action of his own, even acting under the influence of grace, cooperate with God’s grace in order to “merit” greater graces for himself or others. In Luther’s view, even as Christians our works have no value and are, “as filthy rags.” Since even the good works done in Christ have no value we must rely on God’s grace alone. But this creates serious problems when you consider the inverse of this doctrine; namely that our lack of good works and our sin will also not in any way adversely affect our relationship with God or our salvation.

Consider the following quote from Martin Luther, “If you are a preacher of grace, then preach a true, not a fictitious grace; if grace is true, you must bear a true and not a fictitious sin. God does not save people who are only fictitious sinners. Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly. For he is victorious over sin, death, and the world. As long as we are here we have to sin. This life in not the dwelling place of righteousness but, as Peter says, we look for a new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. It suffices that through God’s glory we have recognized the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world. No sin can separate us from Him, even if we were to kill or commit adultery thousands of times each day. Do you think such an exalted Lamb paid merely a small price with a meager sacrifice for our sins? Pray hard for you are quite a sinner.4” This however stands in stark contrast to St. Paul who writes, “Should we go on sinning that grace may abound? May it never be!5” and, “But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people. Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving. For of this you can be sure: No sexually immoral, impure or greedy person—such a person is an idolater—has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God’s wrath comes on those who are disobedient. Therefore do not be partners with them.6” I also have lesser issues with the two remaining solae which I won’t waste time on here.

I’ve spoken to many Protestant friends who have agreed with me on various aspects of my objections to the five solae, but then say that those aren’t the reasons why they reject Catholicism. They have their own reasons! Maybe they reject Catholicism because of its teaching of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist – but Luther and Calvin still believed in this after their split from the Catholic Church. In fact this doctrine was the reason for the first of the divisions which have plagued the Protestant movement for the last 500 years, this one occurring between Luther and Zwingli. Or perhaps they have issues with Catholicism due to the veneration of Mary and the saints, but Luther himself continued to highly venerate Mary saying among other things,“[She is the] highest woman and the noblest gem in Christianity after Christ. ..She is nobility, wisdom, and holiness personified. We can never honor her enough.7” John Calvin said, “It cannot be denied that God in choosing and destining Mary to be the Mother of his Son, granted her the highest honor.” and Zwingli said, “I esteem immensely the Mother of God” and “The more the honor and love of Christ increases among men, so much the esteem and honor given to Mary should grow.”

Often my Protestant friends don’t realize how many “Catholic” beliefs and practices were held by the fathers of the Reformation. Not because they were Catholic beliefs, but rather because they were the historic, orthodox, and Scriptural positions of Christians from the time of Christ forward! For instance, they often don’t realize that the fathers of the Reformation believed in the necessity of baptism for salvation, that they practiced infant baptism, and that they taught that there was no salvation outside of the Church. Granted, they took that doctrine to mean their church rather than the Catholic Church as we see in Calvin’s remarks, “Herman has, if I am not mistaken, in good faith returned to the fellowship of the Church. He has confessed that outside the Church there is no salvation, and that the true Church is with us. Therefore, it was defection when he belonged to a sect separated from it.8” Nevertheless, this was the historic Christian position – not just of the Catholic Church but also of the fathers of the Reformation.

The bottom line was the more I looked at it, the more it seemed as if, The objections to Catholicism that the Reformers initially held weren’t objections that I shared, and the objections that my friends held weren’t objections that the early Reformers shared!

This led me to begin to study what the early Church actually believed when it came to Sacred Tradition, confession, the Eucharist, the communion of the saints, and other “Catholic” positions. To my shock I found that virtually all Catholic doctrine found its roots in the teachings of the early Church – and almost all of it is attested to within the first two hundred years after Christ! There has obviously been an ongoing process of defining doctrine along with the refinement and development of that doctrine, but I was shocked at just how many “Catholic” doctrines were actually early Church doctrines. {As a side note, I highly recommend Jimmy Akin’s book The Fathers Know Best which arranges more than 900 quotes from the early Church Fathers by topic.} This destroyed my previous assumption that somehow around the time of Constantine or shortly thereafter, the church was led into error, probably largely due to Roman influence, and that human reason and meaningless church tradition gradually replaced the true authority of the Scriptures. Instead, I was forced to ask the question, “If the early Church was wrong – was she wrong from the very start? If not, why have we dispensed with so much of what the early Church believed, practiced, and taught based on the say so of Martin Luther and other Protestant Reformers?” This is still following the tradition of men – just men of much more recent descent.

And that is fundamentally my problem. There are logical inconsistencies with the argument on the Protestant side that I just can’t seem to resolve. You have men arguing against the authority of the Catholic Church and for the authority of Scripture alone, but ultimately all they are saying is that they have the right to authoritative interpretation and the Church doesn’t. This requires us to believe that God didn’t work through His Church to teach right doctrine and properly interpret Scripture, but instead we must believe that God has worked through Martin Luther, John Calvin, and the other “Reformers” to teach right doctrine and properly interpret scripture. Protestants assert that the Reformation was divinely ordered and necessitated a split from the Church which Christ founded, but most of them don’t even agree with the theology or doctrines of the original Reformers. And, in the end, I just couldn’t seem to find a logically consistent argument for the split from the historic Catholic Church.

Part Three - Conversion

Even though I was raised being told that we couldn’t be certain about a great many things, I was also raised to believe that truth was absolute. If that seems like somewhat of a contradiction - well, it seemed that way to me as well. The absolute nature of truth comes from the premise that truth conforms to a fundamental reality of which God is the foundation. If truth conforms to reality at a fundamental level, then by definition it is both certain and absolute. That means that truth isn’t relative in spite of the morally (and now religiously) relative society that we live in, because truth by its very nature excludes. Not in a negative sense, but in the sense that two diametrically opposed things can’t both be true at the same time. Sometimes, people will object asking whether mere men can even apprehend the truth. While it should be admitted that just because absolute truth exists, this doesn’t mean that it can be apprehended with certainty. But, I would point out that this is the same slippery slope which leads to agnosticism. The agnostic position is primarily the acknowledgement that God may exist, but that we can’t know for sure – i.e. that we can’t have certainty. For me, introducing divine revelation into the equation really helps to answer the question of whether we can know and apprehend truth.

This lack of certainty has always bothered me intellectually, but it began to bother me in increasingly more pragmatic ways as well. As a young man, my father had the unfortunate job of trying to answer all my questions about sexuality. Incidentally he did a very admirable job – he would schedule entire weekend get-aways with each of his kids out in a cabin in the woods just in order to “have the talk.” Certain things were very clear – no sex outside of marriage. Other things were much less clear. Is masturbation right or wrong? My dad explained that he was raised having been taught that masturbation was a sin. However, James Dobson, an Evangelical Christian psychologist said that masturbation was natural and not a sin. Who was right? He wasn’t sure, and so he couldn’t present me with a certain answer. These same issues plagued me many years later when I became a father and began to have “the talk” with my boys. I found myself struggling with the same questions that my father had, namely, “What do I tell them?” Lengthy conversations with bible college professors and friends who were pastors, led in turn to lengthy conversations with my sons which amounted to reservations, warnings, cautions, and a whole lot of “I don’t know”. Probably better if you try not to; but it’s only natural. I don’t want you to feel guilty, but you really have to watch out for lust. On the other hand, I’d rather have you manage your lust in that way than actually have sex outside of marriage…

This lack of certainty began to bother me even more profoundly when I became a pastor. To have others ask me questions and to only be able to give them multiple options to choose from while pointing out the pros and cons of each position was incredibly frustrating. To have to say, “We can’t really know for sure…” and to find it as deeply unsatisfying as they did even as I tried to convince them that, “that’s just the way things are” was for me completely unacceptable. It felt wrong. It felt untrue. I was not sure that I was willing to accept the premise that we can’t be certain. That it was somehow “wrong” or simplistic and naive to desire certainty.

To me this issue of truth and certainty seems to be a fundamental difference between the Protestant and the Catholic. Within my Protestant upbringing there was no “certainty” on what constitutes and is necessary for salvation. Whether salvation can be lost. Whether baptism is necessary. Whether baptism and communion are Sacramental. Whether or not Sacraments exist at all. Whether works are necessary in addition to faith, and the list goes on and on. And I found it unacceptable to be unable to answer our congregation with any degree of certainty on not just these basic issues of faith, but also questions of morality as well. Is masturbation wrong? Is birth control wrong? Is divorce and remarriage okay? What about homosexuality? For me, the answer cannot be, “I don’t know” or, “well, let me tell you what I think…” This is unacceptable to me as both a father and as one who was shepherding God’s people.

So, do I believe that we can know everything with certainty? Not remotely. Do I believe that we should be able to articulate what is necessary for salvation and to live a life which is pleasing to God? I do. Do I believe that we should be able to declare with all Christians everywhere the historic Creeds of Christendom, confident that they are true and certain summaries of our faith? I do.

We had moved to Northern California and I had taken a new job – largely so that I could begin to work on my Mdiv at Fuller’s Sacramento campus, and all of a sudden I found myself at the proverbial crossroads of life. I had taken a step of faith and moved with my family so that I could get my degree and pursue full-time vocational ministry, and now I was seriously considering not only the claims of the Catholic Church, but also what claims that Church may have on my life. I found myself reflecting on a passage from Saint Mark’s Gospel where Christ commands the disciples to go before Him by boat to Bethsaida. They obey but are forced to fight the wind and the waves all night long before Christ comes to them around 3am walking on the water. He comforts them, calms the wind and the waves, and they proceed together to the other side of the lake where they come to land at Gennesarat9. Did you catch that? He tells them to go to a certain place, allows them to struggle all night to try and get to where He directed them to go, and then comes to them and brings them somewhere else entirely. No comment is made, no explanation is given.

Looking back, I feel very certain that I was following the leading of Christ when I applied to seminary and moved my family to California. He just hadn’t told me yet where He was truly leading me and why.

Coming to the point of actual conversion (for lack of a better word) was unbelievably difficult. Not because of doubts – for the first time in my life I was receiving answers to my previously unanswerable questions! The difficulty was instead in accepting the words of Christ who said, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s foes will be those of his own household. He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and he who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake will find it.10” The difficulty was in forsaking friends and family and church for the sake of Christ. Of letting go of my plans and dreams and desires and giving them to Jesus. Of trusting Him to lead me even when I didn’t know where my final destination would be, or why the journey there had become so difficult.

Throughout this process, our friends and family were incredibly gracious, but they were also very concerned for our wellbeing. They were much like I was before I began to truly study Catholic teaching; they had many misunderstandings about Catholicism, and many wrong notions. As I have remarked on my homepage, “It is often difficult to describe to others all the individual steps taken along the path which have brought you along the way to where you are today. Many have perhaps misunderstood my decision as a leaving behind of one thing for something else, when in reality the experience has been one of adding to, not of taking away – of entering into the fullness of the Christian Faith. There have been many who have asked me why I felt that it was necessary to enter into the Catholic Church; and I cannot find a more perfect answer than that of G.K. Chesterton who wrote that, “The difficulty of explaining ‘why I am a Catholic’ is that there are ten thousand reasons all amounting to one reason: that Catholicism is true.” I would add that for me, there was also the indescribable joy of finding my home – of coming home to the place where I belong.”

For me the process was one of intensive study for almost two years before I finally told my wife that I needed to begin attending Mass and exploring for myself the claims of the Catholic Church. I promised her that I would continue to go to church with her and the kids, but that I could no longer resist God’s pull in my life towards Catholicism. When I said that, I honestly didn’t know if she would agree to attend Mass with me or not! But she was willing to go for my sake, and for six months we attended a local non-denominational church in the morning and St. Teresa of Avila’s parish in the evening as a family. My kids really got a lot of church during that time! Missy and I both agreed that we would enroll in RCIA classes (the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults), and nine months later we were received together into the Catholic Church on Easter Vigil of 2013. I can honestly say that that Easter Vigil service was one of the most profound and joyful experiences of my life!

All of this isn’t to say that I no longer have any questions at all or that I am under some delusion as to the Catholic Church being perfect. She has obviously had her share of failings and problems over the years and will continue to do so, maybe even more so now that I am a member! There have been priests who were dismal failures, bishops and Popes who were motivated by greed, selfishness, and a desire for power rather than love. The Church has done things both amazing and horrific in the name of God. But…she is Christ’s bride, made holy and without blemish by Christ Himself and by the righteous deeds of His saints11. And like all brides, she has been joined to Him that the two may become one flesh. And it is through this incarnational mystery that we, the bride of Christ, become in that marital union of one flesh, the very body of Christ, with He Himself as our head12.

You see, for me, the balance has shifted to the point where I can no longer in good conscience consider myself Protestant. As I pointed out in my post Sola Scriptura ~ An Anachronism:

“I have a sizable problem with any theory that proposes itself in contradiction to the words of Christ who said, “And I tell you,…I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.13” Every Christian denomination which has since split from that Church, has essentially proposed some variation of the theory above. Namely that Christ was wrong; His Church was not preserved by Him, the gates of Hell did prevail against it, and it has now become necessary to split from the Church which He founded and start an entirely new church in order to return to the original teachings of Christ…”

I have come to the conviction that it was indeed Christ who founded His Church - not Luther, or Calvin, or Zwingli, or the King of England, or John and Charles Wesley, or Joseph Smith, or Chuck Smith, or anyone else since that time. I have decided to trust in the plain words of Christ preserved in the Scriptures for us. I have, as a matter of fact, decided that when He guaranteed His Church that He would be with her always – even to the very end of the age; and that when He promised her that He would preserve her against the very gates of Hell14 - He meant it. I have decided that if I am to be His disciple then I should begin with obedience, and in obedience, belong to the Church that He established. And finally, I have decided that Christ is not into polygamy – He desires only one bride.

I will leave you with the words of G.K. Chesterton who wrote, “It is impossible to be just to the Catholic Church. The moment a man ceases to pull against it he feels a tug towards it. The moment he ceases to shout it down he begins to listen to it with pleasure. The moment he tries to be fair to it he begins to be fond of it. But when that affection has passed a certain point it begins to take on the tragic and menacing grandeur of a great love affair.”

Adam works for Permobil and TiLite providing custom complex power and manual wheelchairs for individuals with disabilities. He and his family are active members of St. Teresa of Avila’s Parish in Auburn, CA. He also enjoys blogging at his siteA Faith-Full Life.

Adam Crawford Recommended CD’s:

The Lord’s Supper - John Michael Talbot

All The People Said Amen - Matt Maher

1“Now I would remind you, brothers and sisters, of the good news that I proclaimed to you, which you in turn received, in which also you stand, through which also you are being saved, if you hold firmly to the message that I proclaimed to you—unless you have come to believe in vain. For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me has not been in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them—though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. Whether then it was I or they, so we proclaim and so you have come to believe.” 1 Corinthians 15:1-11

2 Martin Luther – An Instruction on Certain Articles: Late February 1519

11 “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, in order to make her holy by cleansing her with the washing of water by the word, so as to present the church to himself in splendor, without a spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind—yes, so that she may be holy and without blemish.” Ephesians 5:25-27, “…and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready; to her it has been granted to be clothed with fine linen, bright and pure” - for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.” Revelation 19:7-9

12 “He is the head of the body, the church;” Colossians 1:18a, “I am now rejoicing in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church.” 24, “These are only a shadow of what is to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. Do not let anyone disqualify you, insisting on self-abasement and worship of angels, dwelling on visions, puffed up without cause by a human way of thinking, and not holding fast to the head, from whom the whole body, nourished and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows with a growth that is from God.” 2:17-19

13 Matthew 16:18

14 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” Matthew 28:18-20 “And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock, I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.” Matthew 16:18

If you have found this story helpful in your spiritual journey we hope you will consider sharing it. Have feedback or would like to share your story? Email us at convert@whyimcatholic.com

Methodist Convert

Elliott Suttle

Elliott came to the Catholic Church from an apathetic atheism after having been raised in the Methodist church. He currently resides in rural Japan where he teaches English and occasionally blogs about his faith and racing.

From Methodism to Apathy/Atheism and on to Rome

It can be very interesting the paths that God chooses for our lives. While I am generally content to keep the details of stories like this to myself, I’ve felt that it would be helpful to put this on paper. Perhaps it is His will that I relate my journey in order that others may benefit by it. I truly don’t know at this point in time. Perhaps God will reveal to me the reason at some point in the future.

Most of the salient points of the story begin sometime around the Easter season of 2005. In order for the story to have its full effect, however, it is necessary that we go back several years and see the events that lead up to this time. Unfortunately, I’m not certain exactly where to begin. Perhaps this journey began as early as 1992 when I first left for college. In truth, it began well before I was born, but this isn’t an autobiography.

I grew up in a small town in North Carolina to parents who made sure we attended church every weekend, although it was never really something we discussed outside of Sunday morning. Mom had been raised a Presbyterian and Dad a Baptist, so when they married they decided that they would compromise and attend a Methodist church. With the occasional exception, that's the church and theology with which I grew up. Given that we lived in a small town in the South, the Catholic Church was a total non-factor. Unlike many Churches that you may have heard about in the South, there wasn’t the anti-Catholic indoctrination that many grow up with. When I say it was a non-factor, I mean exactly that. I don’t think I had ever even heard of the Catholic Church. When I finally did encounter it, there was still no mention of how it differed. For all I knew, it was exactly like any other denomination. There was exactly one parish in our town, but it was just never mentioned. It wasn't until around middle school that I met a Catholic family for the first time. They were from Maine and had moved in down the road from us. I remember going to Mass with them at some point, but the only thing I really remember about it at this point is that we knelt during Mass. I believe the parish had a communion rail, but I could be mistaken on that point.

For some reason, even at this young age, it seemed wrong to me for two pastors to preach different meanings for the same scripture passage. If we were all part of the same faith, shouldn't the teachings be the same? It also seemed to me that faith should be more than a Sunday morning activity as it seemed to be in our lives.

Anyway, my middle school years were a very bad time for me. At one particular point my friends left me and began to torment me. I had absolutely no friends left, and was a very angry and depressed child. Mom sent me to the pastor for counseling, but I don't recall it doing much good. I only mention this because I also attended school and church with these “friends.” We were going through confirmation classes at the time, and while confirmation meant the world to me, I couldn't stand to be there because of the people with whom I was forced to attend. The part that I still remember to this day is when they began to teach us about church history. They told us that the Methodist church had broken away from the Catholic Church during the Protestant Reformation. To my mind, it didn't make sense to split the Church like that, but because of my situation I didn't dare ask questions about it.

Outside of the people with whom I had to attend, I really did enjoy going to Church. In particular, I was looking forward to my confirmation. My grandfather gave me the Bible that he had been given at his confirmation, and there was really nothing more important to me at that point in time than being there for my confirmation. I woke up on Sunday for confirmation with a stomach virus of some kind. I was far too sick to attend, and my parents told me as much. This was my confirmation, however, and I wasn’t going to miss is it just because I wasn’t feeling particularly well. They finally relented and let go. I somehow managed to get through most of the service just fine, but it didn’t last. Just after being called up to the front for the confirmation portion of the service, the stomach virus caught up with me. I was forced to run to the bathroom in the middle of the ceremony to avoid leaving whatever was left in my stomach all over the minister. I only relate this story because it serves as a great example of what the faith meant to me during this portion of my life. Also, it stands in stark contrast to where I would be after high school.

During high school we moved from North Carolina to California due to my father’s work. I was very fortunate that the Methodist Church we began attending in California had an excellent youth group. Virtually every month we went to youth group conferences, and at one point we ran a summer camp for kids in Alaska. I was still happy to attend church at this point, but I don’t know that it had much effect on my life outside of the times when I was at church or participating in parish-related activities.

When I left for college, many things in my life changed. This, in itself, is not unusual, and is generally experienced by most that go to college. Most of the changes I experienced were due to a lack of maturity on my part, and this contributed to a general laziness regarding my spiritual life. While I still believed in God, and considered myself a Methodist at this point, I had stopped attending church. Part of the reason was a growing belief that I did not need church in order to retain my relationship with God, and another part was the fact that I generally was just going to bed around the time most worship services were starting. Satan knows scripture about as well as anyone, and he often uses it to convince you that what you're doing is right. In my case, he used my ignorance of scripture to help me justify myself in not going to church.

In the middle of these changes, I was confronted for the first time with the topic of abortion. One of the guys that lived on my hall in the dorm my first year at school asked me where I stood on the issue. I told him, truthfully, that I had never really thought about the issue and that I really had no opinion on the matter. He told me that it was far too big an issue and I had better decide where I stood sooner rather than later. To me, the issue seemed to be fairly cut and dried and I approached it from an unusually neutral perspective. I had (and still have) strong leanings toward personal freedom, so I posed the question to myself: which one takes priority? A woman's rights as an individual or the right to be born? It sounds callous, I know, but that was how I looked at it. I never consciously prayed about it, but I believe God knew the questions in my heart and suddenly one day a couple of weeks after running this question through my mind, the answer came to me: murder is always wrong, even if done in the name of personal liberty. In all my wanderings I've never wavered from that idea.

Gradually, my loose affiliation with the Methodist church turned toward something more akin to an apathy towards religion in general. As I took more classes and read more over the course of those intervening years, I became convinced that one could live a moral life outside the structure of a Church. My apathy at its worst became a dislike for religion and I became uncomfortable discussing God and my views on faith. I considered myself at this point in my life to be an Agnostic, leaning somewhat towards Atheism.

I remember going out to dinner with a buddy of mine one night and as we were driving I turned to get something from the back seat. As I was turned, I noticed the bulletin from his Church on the seat. I remember feeling something akin to anger or contempt at the sight. I tell you this to show you just how far from God I was at this time. After my conversion, I identified that emotion for what it truly was: guilt.

Note that while I am pointing out the different stages here in this narrative, all of the changes were very gradual, and occurred over the course of many years.

I remember calling my best friend at some point toward the latter part of this period and the subject of our conversation turned to religion. It seems that he had recently started attending the Catholic Church in his area, and was thoroughly enjoying himself. I distinctly remember telling him that I found it quite interesting that as he was moving closer to God, I found myself growing more distant by the day. This incident in and of itself is fairly inconsequential, but it sticks with me to this day as critical in my path. Was this God calling me home? If so, it wasn't the last time I said no and continued my self-absorbed path.

Early in 2005, a woman by the name of Terri Schiavo made national news. She was in a coma and was being kept alive via a feeding tube. Her husband wanted to have the feeding tube removed so that she could die, while her family was adamant that she be allowed to live. I was a regular listener of the Sean Hannity show at this time, and he was very outspoken on the family’s behalf. He spoke at great length on the issue, telling the audience why he believed her husband was totally wrong on this issue, and how his faith in God backed up his arguments. Mr. Hannity is a Catholic, as is Terri’s family, and he pointed out how the Church was at the forefront of the pro-life movement, both in condemning abortion as evil, and standing up against the “culture of death” that wanted to be able to kill people who were an inconvenience to them. Despite my total denial of any sort of faith, Sean’s arguments resonated with me. I agreed with his points in the case, even though I did not share his religious viewpoint.

Also around this time, Pope John Paul II became very ill. If I remember correctly, it was just before Easter. He died shortly thereafter, and I knew that whether or not I believed, this was an important time for the Church. I watched with interest as the cardinals voted to elect Cardinal Ratzinger the next Pope.

I think it was the Friday before Easter when Terri Schiavo finally died from starvation. Her husband had won the court battle, and had been allowed to remove her feeding tube. According to his lawyers, it would be a peaceful, serene death. I never saw any pictures of her during this time, but I find it hard to imagine being starved to death as anything close to serene, much less peaceful.

Looking back on all this with the perspective that hindsight offers, it seems so obvious that God was using these events as a sign to me of where I needed to be in my life, yet I, like so many others, followed my own wisdom, and blithely ignored them. On Saturday night, the night before Easter Sunday, my entire life began to change. As I sat at my computer playing games or what have you, I was overcome by a need to be at church the next morning. This feeling came from nowhere and was completely at odds with everything going on in my life at the time. Even now, all I can tell you about it was that the Holy Spirit gave me an absolute, no-doubt knowledge that I HAD to be at Church the next morning. In the back of my mind, it seemed like it should be a Catholic Church that I attend, but the overwhelming message was that I attend church. To show you just how long my road was, I was less than excited by the thought of attending church, but I found it somewhat difficult to ignore. I picked up the phone book and found the section of churches. Given that I was living in Tuscaloosa, Alabama at the time, this was a rather large section, so I had to narrow my search somewhat. I think at this point, I began to listen to the signs, and I found the local Catholic parish (note the singular). I searched for the location on mapquest, and figured out how long it would take to get there, and what time I needed to leave. Now, remember the part where I said that I wasn’t thrilled about the idea of attending church again? I decided that since that wasn’t my idea of fun, I would only go if I woke up in time. Ideally, this meant I needed to be awake by 9:30 so that I could make it by 11:00. Anyone that knows me will realize that this was a longshot at best. I generally considered it a victory to get out of bed by 11:00 on the weekends. I played around on the computer a while longer, and sometime after midnight went off to bed, making sure not to set the alarm clock. The next morning, I awoke at 9:30 to the minute. Sighing, I realized that I had indeed made a promise to myself, if no-one else, and so I began to get ready. After showering and putting on my suit, I jumped in the car and proceeded to follow the directions that I had looked up the previous night.

I walked into the Church and found myself a seat towards the back. As I sat there waiting for Mass to start I had the distinct feeling that there was indeed someone present. Someone other than the parishioners and the priest and deacon. I knew in my heart that God was indeed present in this building, watching and listening to the service. Being that I came from a Protestant background where communion was no big deal, I honestly had no idea that Catholic communion was any different than what I had grown up with. For some reason, though, I felt that I should ask the woman next to me about it. In my pride, I ignored this prompting; possibly because she was absolutely beautiful. So I did what I'd been doing the for the entire Mass – I mimicked what everyone else was doing and I went up to receive communion as if I were Catholic. At this parish, they offered both the host and the cup. As I received each one, it was almost like being struck by lightning. When I say this, I mean that it was an actual physical sensation of electricity as I received each species. It was something that I had never experienced before and I was totally unprepared for it. I managed to make it through Mass mainly by imitating the actions of the people near me.

Needless to say, I was a little overwhelmed at this point. After Mass had ended, I stuck around and waited for the Deacon to have a free moment. I explained to him that I had grown up Methodist, and the feeling that I had experienced the previous night. I also explained to him my lack of faith, and the fact that I had not set my alarm clock. Deacon Fran told me that he believed that God wanted me to come to their church that morning, and he gave me the name of the woman in charge of the RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults). This is the class that anyone interested in joining the Catholic Church must attend in order to be received into the Church.

Since school was out for the week due to Easter break, I stopped by the church office and talked to the lady in charge. Naturally, RCIA had just ended because those in it had just been confirmed at the Easter Vigil. She told me that she wasn’t sure if they would be starting a new RCIA class until next spring, but she took my contact information, and gave me the book that they give all candidates so that I could have something to read in the meantime. I think it took me about a week to finish the book, at which time I went to return it to her. She told me it was mine to keep, and maybe a week or two later, she called to tell me that they would be starting a summer RCIA class. It seems they had 18 people wanting to join the Church. I was excited, albeit somewhat nervous, and started going to the class. While at this point, I was certain that I would be attending church on a regular basis, I was a bit hesitant at the idea of leaving the Methodist Church behind and changing churches. My hesitation led me to make a phone call that I never would have considered making under any other circumstances. I was concerned that my conversion to Catholicism might upset my parents, and I needed them to support me in this if I was going to make it. In between classes one day, I sat down in a private room and I called my mother. I gave her a brief background on what had led up to the choices with which I was now faced. Nearly overcome with tears, I asked told her that I needed to know she could support me in my decision because I wasn't sure I could make it otherwise. I can’t imagine how surprised she must have been, but she told me that she was just happy that I was going back to church, regardless of where it was. Having cleared that hurdle, I now had to face my own doubts and reservations.

Fortunately, the RCIA classes lasted all summer long, which gave me plenty of time to contemplate the changes and pray over them. I asked God on a regular basis to let me know which direction I should go, and I saw nothing that indicated I was going against His wishes. In fact, the people I met at that church were some of the nicest, and most helpful that I have ever had the pleasure of knowing in a church setting. All of these things helped to ease my mind regarding my decisions. As I started RCIA, however, I was given a study abroad opportunity at school where I would be studying in Japan for a month. This was to be the month of June – right in the middle of my formation. The RCIA director really didn't have a problem with it, so I made plans to go. It was a trip of a lifetime, although I realize that my formation and understanding of Catholicism was stunted because of it.

On October 9, 2005, I became a full member of Holy Spirit Catholic Church in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. It was a day I had waited for all summer, and I am still thoroughly convinced that I made the right decision (albeit with a great deal of help). Unfortunately, my graduation soon followed my membership in the Church, and I was forced to leave the Church I had come to love. Before I left Alabama, however, I went to the Diocese of Raleigh website, and began a list of possible churches to attend once I moved to North Carolina. As soon as I arrived there, I began visiting churches in the area, and, after much deliberation and prayer, I signed up to become a member of St. Raphael the Archangel of Raleigh. Almost immediately, I spoke to the choir director, who was thrilled at the prospect of gaining another tenor (they only had two at the time). In April 2006, I was admitted to the Knights of Columbus and have since been honored with exemplification to the fourth degree.

Many conversion stories you read end here – a happily ever after as they revel in their newfound faith as Catholics. My story is really just beginning. I entered the Church and like many others, I was on fire for the faith. I was finally home and at peace with God's calling. The problem was that I was an on fire Cafeteria Catholic. I had missed a good deal of formation and instruction while I was in Japan and so had carried far too many Protestant ideals into my life as a new Catholic. I denied many truths and dogmas of the faith that are critical to being a Catholic in good standing. Fortunately, God is nothing if not patient and He always has a plan. When I moved to Raleigh, I had a job but it didn't start for close to six months. This gave me a lot of free time as you can imagine. I truly wanted to know God and his ways, so I began watching and listening to EWTN. As I listened, watched, and read, my heart began to be opened to the truths that the Catholic Church professes. It took a long time, possibly a year or more, but eventually a thought occurred to me one day: “Why would you profess a faith and not believe everything it teaches? That makes no sense whatsoever.” I knew I was being given another choice and this time I chose God. I resolved at that point to believe all that the Church taught, without exception, and live my life according to those principles. I won't lie and say that made things easier, but it seemed then (as it does now) that the choice was either to believe it all or return to my Methodist roots.

Shortly after making this decision in favor of God, I was forced to relocate to Greensboro. Once I had moved and found a new parish home, I began to search for my place in the Church. I spoke to my new pastor and we both agreed that the priesthood probably wasn’t where I was being called. He did, however, suggest that I try the local Benedictine monastery. Later that year I called the Abbot of Belmont Abbey and scheduled a retreat weekend. I had never met a religious before, and wasn’t exactly sure what to expect. It turned out to be a fantastic weekend and I ended up spending the better part of two years making monthly retreats with them. Eventually I realized that while I loved the Benedictine simplicity and structure, I couldn’t make the commitment to live in that one house for the rest of my life. Regardless, I will always be thankful to those monks for introducing me to the Liturgy of the Hours. That gift has really given structure to my prayer life and helped me to ensure that I am praying every day.

A couple of years after this, I finally got my finances lined up well enough that I could do something I had been wanting to do since I was in RCIA: move to Japan and teach English. I made up my mind that I would apply this one time. If I got it, I would leave and not look back. If I didn’t, I was going to take a more active leadership role in my Knights of Columbus council and spend the rest of my time racing. The application process for teaching in Japan is very long and involved, taking almost six months to complete. The whole time I prayed that God’s will be done. I kept waiting for them to find some reason to reject my application, but they never did. Finally, in Spring of 2013 I got a call saying that they wanted me to teach.

I had thought some about the difficulties of being a Catholic in Japan before I got here, but I really had no idea. Japan is not a Catholic country. It’s not even remotely Christian. Last time I looked, about 0.4% of the population is Catholic. I was placed in a very remote area of Japan, about midway between two parishes. The closest of the two is an hour drive. Sunday Mass (there’s only one offered) generally consists of about 20 people. Sometimes we have as few as 10. On a really busy weekend we might have 30. There isn’t a choir, and there are no groups to join to help fit in with the community. I don’t say all this as a complaint, but more as an insight into how we tend to take those kinds of things for granted in Western countries. The parishes in the US and basically all Western countries provides you a sort of spiritual safety net on which to fall back in times of need. That simply doesn’t exist here. In some ways, this has helped me to remain solid in my faith. Without that safety net, I have to be far more diligent in the practice of my faith.

I have no idea what God has in store for me next. Perhaps I will return to America in a couple of years and get back to life as it was. Or maybe I will stay here and get a job in one of the major cities. Either way, I know that I will have the Catholic faith to use as my compass and guide.

I grew up in a home that was politely Protestant yet sometimes hostile towards organized religion. My younger brother and I were baptized in a interdenominational church when I was 5, and though I remember occasionally attending Sunday School, most religious endeavors and efforts had ceased by the time I was in elementary school. I always felt a curiosity toward my friends and classmates who were from families of faith, but generally didn’t feel left out – all but one of my friends came from fairly non-religious families. I entered high school externally indifferent about the existence of God, and even professed some strong agnostic beliefs, but deep down I never lost this feeling that there was something more.

Whether by Divine Providence, or just good luck, I exclusively dated Catholic guys throughout high school (interestingly enough, all of French Canadian descent). Through them, I was introduced to the world of Catholicism – it was mysterious, sensual, and completely foreign to me. The first time I ever entered a Catholic church was to attend Mass with my boyfriend and his family when I was still in high school. As his family sat and unfolded the kneelers I said, “Oh wow! Footrests!” I honestly thought the church had footrests installed and had no idea that they were used to kneel in prayer. Needless to say, his family didn’t find it very amusing!

Even when I wasn’t dating a Catholic, I still thought about the Church and somehow felt drawn there from time to time. I remember feeling something physically different about being in a Catholic church than any other church I had ever been in. I remember feeling warmth, comfort, peace, and calm wash over me as I would sit silently. I loved the way the candles flickered and gently illuminated the mesmerizing statues of Mary. It would be years before my heart was open enough to identify that physical feeling with Christ’s true presence in the Eucharist, and even longer before I recognized Mary as my mother, gently and patiently calling her child into her Son's waiting arms.

Late in high school, I went through a series of trials that included a serious medical condition complicated by the end of my parents’ 20-year marriage. At this time, I met the man whom I would eventually marry. He was, of course, a cradle Catholic and French Canadian, but something was different about his faith – and especially his family’s.

Meeting my future husband’s family proved difficult and challenging to everything I had come to believe and think. However, never had I seen people live their faith in a more authentic way. Not one of them claimed to be superior or holy in any way, but they joyfully answered the call to pick up their cross and follow Christ, even when it made them unpopular, foolish, and counter-cultural. I certainly didn’t agree with what they believed, or necessarily how they chose to live their life – but I deeply respected how authentically they attempted to live their Catholic faith. I was hooked.

Around this same period of time, I made the seemingly innocuous decision to drop my math class my final semester of my senior year of high school, instead electing to take a Comparative Religion course that one English teacher at my high school offered. I fell in love with learning about the sacred writings, traditions, and practices of the world’s great faith traditions. So much so, that I declared a Religious Studies major in college the following Fall and devoted all of my time to discovering the world of religion that I was so ignorant to as a child. I had no idea what I would do with this degree, but I had found something I loved and trusted that the money would somehow follow (which it did).

The Fall of my freshman year in college, I was wrestling with whether or not I should pursue joining the Church; at this point, I had been attending Mass on a regular basis and had come to believe the core tenets of the faith. I had prayed, read Scripture, and was discovering the Catechism of the Catholic Church but finally decided that I was perfectly comfortable attending Mass, and even marrying in the Catholic Church, but not “making it official.” This was a decision that had taken me several months to come to, though I never felt any pressure from anyone in my "Catholic cohort,” and for this I was (and am) immensely grateful. Within days of making the decision to not enter the Church I woke up one morning and knew that God was inviting me to become Catholic - I knew it like I know that I love my daughter. It was the most real, physical feeling I had on my heart and felt in my whole body – I can’t explain it any more than I knew with my entire being what God was asking of me.

After this realization, I immediately started my parish’s R.C.I.A. program. I found the process at my parish to be very prayer-filled and spiritual, but was frustrated when no one provided any real answers to my questions about the Church, many of which included the “W.O.C.A.H.” topics (as I’ve heard them called): Women’s Ordination, Contraception, Abortion, and Homosexuality. Beyond that, I had questions of heaven, hell, purgatory, salvation, grace, the Sacraments (did I really need to confess my sins to a priest?), the list went on and on. I was so thankful that I had the Catechism that at least gave me the “official” Church teaching and could point me to other resources to help me, and it was truly my desire for the Eucharist that kept pulling me all the way to the Easter Vigil. I know this is a difficult issue for many people, but, oddly enough, it never was for me. I had felt an inexplicable physical difference between Catholic churches and Protestant churches - God’s grace had finally broken into my heart and I realized that the physical reaction I was having was Christ calling to me to Him in the Eucharist. After that realization, I yearned and desired to commune with him in that physical way.

At the Easter Vigil in 2008, I was fully received into the Catholic Church in the Diocese of Grand Rapids, Michigan, and I felt so blessed and joyful that God had led me home to the Catholic Church. Looking back, I was probably unprepared to be fully received into the Church that spring, but God’s wisdom and mercy are infinite, and my new faith played a key role in the development and growth of my (now) husband and I.

Becoming Catholic strengthened my relationship with my (now) husband, whose passion for the Church was ignited by my interest, and he began to rediscover his faith as an adult and take ownership of it. The summer after my reception into the Church, my boyfriend and I decided to move in together. His family was, of course, not supportive of us living together before marriage and my family thought we were young but had no moral problem with the decision. As Catholics, my husband and I knew what the Church taught about premarital sex, cohabitation, and contraception but had no understanding of the theology behind it. Though my fascination and love of the Church had grown, I still had no regard for the Church’s teachings on this matter. No one at our parish, including our priest, seemed to have any objection to our situation and lifestyle choice.

Though I would never admit it at the time, I had increasingly felt uncomfortable living together and engaging in premarital sex, though my discomfort was tempered when we became engaged just a few months after moving in together. Even though I wasn’t ready to listen, God was patiently and quietly directing us to a more moral choice - making the best of our less-than-perfect (or prayerful!) decisions.

We married a little more than a year after I become Catholic in the same church in which I was received into the Church. It was a beautiful day and a beautiful Sacrament, but once again I was disappointed with the lack of sacramental preparation we experienced - we were required to attend a one-day retreat through the Diocese, which was conversational fodder for our trip home. It was a concern when we discovered that many of the couples in our group had never discussed many of the retreat topics – finances, prayer life, family size, etc. We felt much more prepared for marriage, comparatively, yet not once did anyone even mention things like Theology of the Body or Natural Family Planning. It was quietly assumed that everyone was probably having premarital sex, contracepting, and cohabitating, and that seemed to be perfectly acceptable.

Our first year of marriage passed by generally uneventful – nothing seemed to have changed after getting married. We were living just like we did before, but we had just gotten a lot of gifts and a great big party. Around the time of our anniversary, I began feeling uncomfortable because I increasingly felt that God was asking us to stop using artificial contraception. Again, I can only describe it as this tangible, physical feeling that my entire being knew what God was asking of us (yet my will still wouldn’t obey!). I was put on the pill at 15 for irregular periods, like many young women are, and had continued to be on every brand and dose imaginable. My husband still saw no moral reason why we should stop using hormonal birth control, especially since he did not want to become pregnant until we were in a better financial position. I visited my doctor because I was experiencing excessive pain and bleeding from uterine fibroids and ovarian cysts, which he reluctantly said were probably a side effect of the prolonged hormonal contraception. This was enough to convince my husband to go off the pill.

Still, we had no idea how to practice Natural Family Planning - by God’s grace, my sister-in-law was (and is) an NFP instructor and when I quietly approached her about learning NFP she graciously, and without judgment, gave me all the resources I needed to transition to NFP. The entire year after I stopped taking the Pill was very difficult for us. It took my body a full six months to begin ovulating again, and it wasn’t until my body purged itself of all the synthetic hormones that had built up from years of taking the pill did I fully realize how damaging it had been to my entire being - body and spirit.

After we stopped contracepting, I had never felt healthier in my entire life – the cysts and fibroids had disappeared, my cycles were completely regular, and my migraines had become almost non-existent. I fell in love with the body that God created for me! As a woman, I felt that society and the medical profession had only ever told me that something was wrong with my body and that it was never good enough – finally I reveled in the fact that God had created a perfect and beautiful body that worked without always being on some prescription! My self-esteem and confidence soared – all because God was quietly and patiently leading me.

To challenge us even more, however, my husband and I felt clearly called to be more open to life in our marriage. We had only been married about 18 months at this point, and we had both finished college but my husband had been struggling to find consistent work and I was the primary breadwinner. We were living paycheck to paycheck, yet we had a lovely rental house, two working cars and always enough money for groceries. Not exactly what we wanted – but just what we needed. Yet, for several months we felt that we should be open to the possibility of a child. This was frightening, uncharted territory for both of us, and required a radical obedience to His call. Once again, I felt Christ calling me to be foolish in the eyes of the world so I could grow in holiness in the eyes of the Lord.

Using the gift of NFP, we conceived in Spring 2011. Our life immediately became more difficult and burdensome. Money was tight; our relationship was strained for many weeks, and my body was desperately trying to adjust to supporting the new life within me. God's ways are not always our own and we had so much to think and pray about. During those weeks of darkness, God truly carried us both.

However, God gave me such a gift in teaching me to embrace my femininity and my incredible ability to cooperate in His creation through bringing new life into the world. I chose to use a midwife and give birth at home, because of the confidence God gave me in my body's abilities. Our daughter, Cecilia Catherine was born on December 1, 2011 at 11:35 p.m. in our living room. Minutes after she was born, snow began gently falling outside and two of my best friends were there quietly praying a Rosary, supporting our new family. My husband had helped to catch Cecilia and we basked in the glory and perfection of our newborn daughter. She is the most beautiful gift I have ever been given and I believe with all my heart that she is not truly mine - all children are on loan to us from God and we have the responsibility of making sure they are returned to Him.

There’s a saying that reality is stranger than fiction, and I believe this is always true when we walk through our life with the Lord. In my personal journey, there are two lessons He is continually teaching me through His Church: trust and obey. Always. Because He is God and I am not. I have given up asking for what I want because I know it’s a useless endeavor with Him. Instead, I only ask for the strength to do His Will, whatever that may be. And I am so much happier for it – He offers us true happiness and true freedom if we only listen to the wisdom of His Church. Following the Way of the Cross is not easy, comfortable, or always pleasant, but the Eternal Creator always knows what is best for us - radical love, trust, and obedience to the Living God that is Love.

Episcopal Convert

David Ozab

David Ozab is a writer living in Eugene, Oregon. Raised Episcopalian, he joined the Catholic Church in 2011. He is married and has an eight-year-old daughter who will receive her First Communion in May.

Beautiful Whispers

"Beauty will save the world." – Alexander Solzhenitsyn

God speaks to us all the time, but he usually speaks in subtle ways. Beautiful whispers that draw us little by little toward him. God spoke to me many times in the most unlikely places, although I didn't recognize his voice until much later.

Thirty years ago when I was in high school, God whispered to me for the first time. My mom bought a book at a garage sale titled Men, Ships, and the Sea. It was beautiful: filled with color photos of all kinds of ships, fine works of nautical art, rapturous descriptions of sailing, but the most beautiful thing in the book was left there by its previous owner. When I opened the pages for the first time, a picture of Jesus slipped out. As a Protestant, and a nominal one at that, I didn't recognize the image of the Sacred Heart but the simple beauty of that picture spoke to me. I mounted it that day – a single tack piercing the spot labeled "If you wish to hang up this picture make a hole here." That picture has moved with me several times since, and today it hangs at my bedside.

God whispered to me a second time by placing the desire in my heart to become a musician, and giving me the courage to tell my parents I was going to study music in college. Had I pursued music outside the academy, I would have traveled down the wrong road: nightclubs, alcohol, and casual sex – the rock and roll life. Instead, God sent me to music school and immersed me in the beauty of the Mass. Compositions written by some of the greatest composers – Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, and Palestrina – were settings of the Latin Mass. I had a passing acquaintance with the liturgy through my occasional visits to church; now I was learning it through the most beautiful sacred music ever written. I studied it in classes and I sang it in choirs. Even in a public university, I couldn't get away from God if I tried.

The third time God whispered to me was after I moved to Oregon for graduate school. Despite years of exposure to sacred music, I still stayed away from church and from God. So he employed a less subtle beauty this time. He brought an amazing woman into my life, and I fell in love. Julia is a Catholic whose faith helped her through a very difficult time in her life. At first, I was drawn to her physical beauty: her shimmering topaz-brown eyes, sparkling smile and lustrous burgundy hair. As I got to know her I saw another kind of beauty that was deep and profound: her kindness and compassion. I knew God created her physical beauty, and also nurtured the seeds of faith that blossomed into her spiritual beauty.

It was Julia that finally brought me to church. After months of encouragement, I agreed to go to Midnight Mass with her. All it took was getting me in the door. Within weeks I returned to the church of my baptism: The Episcopal Church. Now God had me where he wanted me and there was no going back. But he wasn't done with me yet.

The time for subtlety had ended. God plunged me into beauty: the music, the liturgy, and the smells and bells of High Church worship. The Episcopal Church at its best is as close to Catholic as you can get while remaining a good Protestant. God knew he wasn't getting me into a Catholic parish right away, but he pointed me in the right direction. Within weeks of joining, I bought a copy of the Book of Common Prayer (the book used in all Episcopal worship) and taught myself how to pray daily. The beautiful language drew me in, creating a quiet, prayerful space in my heart where I could talk to God without worrying about the right words.

Through private prayer, God drew me closer to Benedictine spirituality. I didn't know this at the time, but it was St. Benedict's Rule that formed the foundation of all Western monasticism, which in turn influenced the prayers I was saying each day. Once I learned this, I began studying the Rule. At first it seemed distant to me. I wasn't a monk so what did I need to know about sleeping arrangements or scheduling meals in a monastery? However, with time and guidance I began to see the simple beauty in Benedict's practical suggestions. Humble, self-sacrificing love: that's what it was all about. I didn't need to follow the Rule as if I was a monk, but I was compelled to keep the spirit of the Rule as a husband and father.

Having tasted that spirit, I sought out the closest Benedictine community. I found Mount Angel Abbey about ninety minutes away and began taking annual retreats. There in the abbey church, immersed in the chants of the monastic hours and kneeling before an icon of Christ mounted above the Tabernacle, I broke into tears overwhelmed by the beauty of his presence. God embraced me. He was always there, but now I knew it.

Still something was missing, and the Tabernacle, the monks, and the Sacred Heart picture at my bedside revealed to me what that was. I would never be home until I came all the way home, until I put away my last reservations and joined the Catholic Church.

On the first evening of RCIA, we visited the Adoration Chapel, where the Blessed Sacrament is reserved at all times. The consecrated host – nestled in a golden sunburst at the heart of a large glass cross – sat atop an altar, and several people knelt in quiet prayer. I knelt as well and made the sign of the cross. As I did, I felt a wave of electricity course through me, and at last I recognized the voice I'd been hearing all along.

Catholic Convert

Jewels Green

I grew up fatherless in a multigenerational household. Being surrounded by extended family – all the time – was a great comfort to me as an only child, as was attending Sunday School every week at the ELCA Lutheran church where my mother and her seven siblings were all baptized, where I was baptized, and where later my three sons would all be baptized as well.

I loved Sunday School and singing in the children's choir at church. The music of worship always made me feel happy, at peace, and closer to God. My favorite hymns of childhood still bring me such joy. I remember in one of the classrooms at Sunday School hung a beautiful painting of Jesus, surrounded by children, and I thought “it would be wonderful if He were my dad!” When the teacher explained that He was my spiritual Father, well, that suited me perfectly.

As the years went on, I embarked upon a bumpy road through a stage of adolescent rebellion, though I still went to Sunday school. I attended every Sunday, even with a shaved head and heavy black eyeliner – until I was sixteen. That's when my faith got shaky, then disappeared completely for a spell. I'd ‘fallen in with the wrong crowd’, which meant I'd fallen out of my religion.

The road got bumpier when I dropped out of high school and ran away from home to live with my boyfriend. I found myself pregnant at 17 and pressured into having an abortion that I did not want. It nearly destroyed me. The guilt was overwhelming. I tried to take my own life and spent nearly a month in an adolescent psychiatric unit to recover.

Upon my release, I did my best to put my life back together. Although my rebellion led me to deny Christ, my soul still thirsted for the divine. I spent years trying to fill the hole in my heart. I read about Eastern religions, nature religions, Native American religions, and still found myself empty.

I tried to overcome both my guilt and spiritual indirection by channeling my inner frustration toward helping others. Unfortunately, I couldn't have chosen a more dubious outlet: I got a job at an abortion clinic.

At first, my goal was to try to identify others who felt pressured into abortion, who felt they had no other choice. I thought if I was there, I'd be able to spot that young woman and help her to not make the same mistake I did. I remained vehemently and vocally pro-choice, in spite of my personal horrific experience with abortion. In hindsight, I believe I was trying to surround myself with people who thought abortion was okay, in the hopes that maybe someday I'd believe that, too. While I missed my baby every day, I still clung to this incongruous belief that it was still somehow permissible for other mothers to end their babies' lives. I rarely attended church during my time working at the abortion center.

Later, while attending graduate school in New York City, I began to feel the presence of God in my life again. It wasn't an overwhelming "ah-HA!" moment, it was no Road to Damascus, but a tiny feeling inside that simply refused to be ignored. At first I didn't talk about it with anyone. I tried to examine my tough facade of forced intellectualism (decidedly secular) to find the chink in my armor that had let something inexplicable sneak through. I'd given up on my search for religion, for God, and was deeply ensconced in academia. I wanted to be a scientist, not a churchgoer!

It wasn't until after grad school that I truly allowed myself to explore this fledgling feeling of faith that had crept back into my consciousness. I worked as a Research Assistant at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan. This was a place full of the promise of cure and hope for recovery, but also a place of sadness, resignation, and death. No one could work there day after day, year after year, and remain unaffected by this aching paradox.

Along the hallway to the cafeteria was a small interfaith chapel. Its primary purpose was to provide a quiet place of meditation for patients and their loved ones to reflect and pray. I'd seen other employees walk through the chapel door before, but for months I just walked past it. I was always keenly aware of the sacredness of the space beyond that door, and wildly curious, but remained stubbornly secure behind my secular, scientific veneer. One day, however, I stopped...and I opened the door.

The chapel was small, dimly lit, and undeniably sacred. That first time, all I did was peek in and then went back to work.

The next day, I went inside and sat down for a few minutes on one of the pews. I don't remember what, if anything, I thought about while I was there, but I remember feeling at peace. Every day after lunch I sat quietly in the chapel for a few minutes. My belief in God strengthened with each visit. Not because of that particular prayer space, but because I allowed myself to search inside of me for prayer space.

It wasn't until a few years later, after leaving NYC and that job, that I began attending church. My husband and I attended the Lutheran church where I grew up, mostly to prepare for the baptism of our first son. My husband was raised Catholic, his uncle was a priest, and his great uncle had been a Franciscan brother; but he was not practicing his faith. We weren't even married in a church, but in a hot air balloon in Las Vegas by a minister of the United Church of Christ. He agreed to attend Lutheran worship services with me to have our three sons baptized in the Lutheran Church.

During this Christian (yet only quasi-religious) time in my life I was still nominally pro-choice, although I did not donate to the cause or attend rallies and had stopped working at the abortion clinic after my first son was born. We began to attend a Lutheran church more regularly after our second and third sons were born. I volunteered on the preschool committee, we participated in fellowship events at church, but neither of us ever really felt ‘at home’ there. We talked about this, but never with the goal of finding a solution, and we never discussed the possibility of me becoming Catholic, or of our family trying out another faith.

Everything changed in November 2010. Still considering myself a pro-choice Lutheran, I was involved in an online group discussion of in-vitro fertilization (IVF). I confess that I'd never really given it much thought before that conversation, but being a scientifically-minded modern woman, IVF was lumped in with those other issues of “reproductive rights" that I assumed were essential to maintaining equality for women.

There were about ten women in the discussion group, two of whom were very faithful Catholics. I credit these two women with planting the very seeds of my eventual conversion – both to the pro-life worldview, and to embracing the Catholic faith – by inviting me to question my deeply held, yet unexamined, opinions. They were not aggressive or condescending, but they both refused to compromise their beliefs as they calmly but firmly held their ground in the face of outnumbered opposition and remained steadfast in their defense of the sanctity and dignity of the lives of the unborn.

I became uncomfortable as I read more about IVF, especially the staggering statistic that for every one child born as a result of IVF procedures 4 or 5 or more embryos are created – and most often destroyed – or kept frozen for an unknown length of time until they are discarded, or more rarely, adopted. In the United Kingdom that number is even higher, with as many as 30 embryos created to reach the goal of one live birth.

As I struggled to reconcile my pro-choice, pro-reproductive rights label with my growing unease with this inhumane practice, one of the members of our discussion group announced she agreed to be a gestational surrogate for an unrelated couple who were her friends. Eventually she became pregnant with this couple's child and shared stories of her experience as a member of a support group for surrogate mothers. She told us of one woman's surrogacy contract including a stipulation for genetic testing on the baby. When the results showed the baby she was carrying had Down syndrome, she was offered payment of her contract in full to abort.

And she did.

That was it. The light bulb switched on and has been burning brightly ever since. This woman was paid to kill the baby she was carrying for others. Pregnancy was now a laboratory experiment, with children as a commodity being made, bought, sold, and destroyed. This was wrong, on a basic and fundamental level.

I could no longer call myself pro-choice. So many lives were being senselessly destroyed around me. The life of my first child, the thousands of abortions committed while I worked at the abortion center, the countless cold souls in the IVF freezers around the world, the surrogate mothers paid to kill the innocent, unrelated babies they were carrying. I was now pro-life.

But I was left with the question: What now?

I contacted a local pro-life pregnancy resource center that offered services free of charge to pregnant mothers in need. My family and I participated in a "Walk for Life" fundraiser and I met with the director to find out what else I could do to help them. Naturally, what these centers need most are volunteers and donations to cover the cost of the ultrasound machines, nurses, social workers, and counselors, as well as standard operating costs like rent, office furniture, utilities, and the like.

I approached my Pastor to discuss the possibility of arranging a fundraiser for Amnion through the church and I was unprepared to be met with strong opposition. He explained to me the ELCA Social Statement on abortion was essentially pro-choice. I was flabbergasted. Even if the ELCA was pro-choice, surely our church could see the benefit of helping mothers with ultrasounds, counseling, baby clothes, parenting classes, and other basic necessities. My request to collect donations was denied, and I left that church feeling confused and betrayed, and I have not been inside that building since that day.

This is when the real soul searching began. I struggled with wanting to remain with the comfort of the faith of my childhood yet not believing what was being preached. Was I upset with my Pastor, or with my religion? Did I want my children to be raised in a pro-choice religion? I thought of my strong Catholic friends, both online and in my day-to-day life, and I knew they were unapologetically 100% pro-life. I was attracted to this notion that right and wrong are eternal moral concepts, not bound by the whims and social customs of a particular time or era. Truth is not decided by popular vote.

I started to research the Catholic faith in earnest.

I searched Google for "pro-life Catholic" and the results included a link to The Angelica Joy Story, a documentary about a devout Catholic family blessed with 10 children facing the tragedy of learning that the mother's next child was diagnosed in utero with a rare, fatal genetic disorder where babies routinely only live for a few hours after birth. Remaining faithful to the Catholic Church's teaching, her parents chose to carry their baby girl to term. She lived for five months and brought immense joy to everyone she met. Her family is exceedingly grateful for the time they spent with her during her short life.

What struck me, other than the tremendous courage and strength of this remarkable family, was their constant faith in God's plan. Included in the film is an image of Angelica's mother staring at what I now know was a monstrance, but at the time when I heard her voiceover say, "As I again was graced with the opportunity to spend time in the Adoration chapel..." I was mystified.

Adoration chapel.

Adoration.

What was that?

I knew Catholics believed that Jesus was really in the consecrated Host, whereas in Protestant churches the Communion wafer is a symbol of Jesus' body, but I didn't fully understand what that meant until I continued reading more about Catholicism.

Learning the true meaning of the Real Presence in the Eucharist was a turning point for me. I wanted to receive Him in the Blessed Sacrament and be a part of the Body of Christ. I wanted to be a part of the Church founded by Jesus, with a direct line of apostolic succession, and where capital-T Truth was unchanging and eternal.

I wanted to be Catholic.

I called my husband's uncle, a priest and Pastor of a parish, and spent more than an hour on the phone with him asking questions.

I reached out to an acquaintance from my former church that had converted from ELCA Lutheran to Catholic and was now studying to become a permanent Deacon. He was (and still is) an amazing resource. He gave me a list of books, the first of which was Rome Sweet Home: Our Journey to Catholicism by Scott and Kimberly Hahn. I read it in a few days (quite a feat with three small sons to care for!) I couldn't read enough conversion stories, I read Heather King's Redeemed and Timothy Drake's There We Stood, Here We Stand which is a collection of stories specifically about Lutherans who converted to Catholicism. I started following Jennifer Fulwiler's blog ConversionDiary.com that describes in detail her conversion from pro-choice atheist to pro-life Roman Catholic. Stories of former abortion industry workers' conversions especially appealed to me: Abby Johnson's Unplanned and Dr. Bernard Nathanson's The Hand of God. A dear friend took me to my first Mass (that wasn't a wedding or a funeral – the only other two Masses I'd ever attended) and I was moved to tears. Just outside the entrance of the church was a statue of a weeping angel dedicated to all of the children killed by abortion.

I was home.

I picked up a copy of Catholicism for Dummies and registered to start RCIA. Different parishioners taught the classes each week, a few lifelong Catholics, a few converts, one man studying to be a permanent Deacon, and naturally the Pastor taught as well.

After a couple of classes, I felt it was time for me to visit the Perpetual Adoration Chapel.

The Adoration Chapel at my parish’s 130-year-old grey stone church is tiny and is used as the children’s chapel during Mass. It has five pews, one loud hissing overactive radiator, two ridiculously beautiful stained glass windows, and one brilliant monstrance embracing and displaying the consecrated Host. The first time I opened the chapel door I could sense the presence of something unspeakably holy.

I closed the door behind me as gently and silently as I could, dipped my fingers into the wall-mounted font of Holy Water, blessed myself, turned to face the monstrance and promptly fell to my knees. Both knees. On the floor. That first time I hadn’t even made it as far as a pew, much less a kneeler. I held my head in my hands for a moment, collected myself, and finally rose to sign in as a “visitor” on the Adorers schedule. I slid into the last pew, lowered the kneeler, glanced up at the Blessed Sacrament for a moment, then closed my eyes, and put my head back into my hands.

My reaction to entering the Adoration Chapel for the first time reminded me of the very first time I spontaneously and involuntarily fell to my knees overwhelmed with prayers of praise and thanksgiving: when I learned I was expecting my firstborn son. I just knew I was finally on the right path.

The RCIA process was fascinating, exciting, illuminating, and at times confusing. There is simply not enough time to know all there is to know about the beauty and fullness of truth contained within the Catholic Church. The Church is all over the world – there are Masses every day, and Jesus it truly present in the Eucharist at every Mass, in every tabernacle, in every monstrance EVERYWHERE.

While being a faithful Catholic is not easy, it is right, and it is what God wants for us – what God wants for me. I learn more about my faith every day and I am immensely grateful for the Sacraments. My First Reconciliation, Confirmation, First Holy Communion, and the Convalidation of my marriage are among the true highlights of my life. My family and I attend Mass together and our children are now being raised in the Catholic faith. We feel at home in our parish.

Throughout this journey I have enjoyed the unwavering support of my husband. I am so very thankful for his understanding and patience with my process of self-discovery. While we have grown and changed during our 14 years of marriage, we have always been remarkably blessed with being on the same page at the same time. This is where I see the hand of God at work most in my life – in my relationship with my husband and my children. I am truly blessed and overwhelmingly grateful for my faith.

Edited by Rachel Waugh

Jewels Green's personal blog can be found atwww.jewelsgreen.com and she is currently serving as an Editor for the pro-life organization Feminists for Life.

If you have found this story helpful in your spiritual journey we hope you will consider sharing it. Have feedback or would like to share your story? Email us at convert@whyimcatholic.com

Catholic Revert

Emma Fradd

Raised Catholic, Emma Fradd became an atheist in high school based off the reasoning that she couldn't prove God existed. That changed when she received an extraordinary grace through the hands of the Blessed Mother.

Five years ago, I was an Atheist. I was born and raised as a Catholic but when I got to high school and started thinking more about my ‘faith’, I became friends with people who didn’t believe in God, so I considered myself to be an atheist. I always asked myself the question: “Is there a God?” My main reasoning behind being an atheist was that I couldn’t see God; I couldn’t hear Him or feel Him, so He just must not be real. This pushed me to live an unhealthy lifestyle, filled with drugs, alcohol, stealing, impure relationships and for the most part, just sadness.

I remember during high school being very open to anything that would come my way. I had friends that were into Wicca and Buddhism, and I remember trying out their methods of prayer and not experiencing anything. I guess you could say that for part of my high school years, I was Agnostic, not 100% sure on any religion, but still open to the idea of a God. When I entered grade 10, I joined an atheist band and was very vocal about my disbelief, especially in the Catholic God because I went to a Catholic school. I remember having to sit through weekly masses, where I refused to kneel or get up to receive Communion, even though I had received the sacrament (probably a good thing for me at the time).

My brother Matthew experienced a powerful conversion while attending World Youth Day in Rome in the year 2000. I remember him coming back and being so joyful. He changed from a brother who used to pick on me, to a brother who I could talk to about anything. In May of 2008 after my 18th Birthday, when he invited me to live with him and his wife Cameron in Ireland for 3 months, I quickly accepted his offer.

I got my visa, which allowed me to get an interesting job, and spent more time with my nephew Liam, who was incredibly cute! But of course, being the radical Catholics that Matt and Cameron were, they prayed nightly, attended Mass as often as they could, and would invite me to attend. I would always refuse, “No Matt, I don’t believe in it, you go ahead, I’ll stay home.” One night when we were chatting about the existence of God, Matt was kindly arguing a good point, but I just kept pointing out “How do I know Matt? How do I know that there is a God and that what you’re saying is true?” I remember him saying, “Emma, you’ll never know for sure if God is real or not unless you pray to Him and be open to Him.” This was hard to hear, seeing as I was flat out refusing to pray every time he had invited me during my stay in Ireland.

Matt and Cameron were youth ministers at a parish in County Donegal, and that summer they planned on taking their youth to a town called Medugorje, in Bosnia, where the Virgin Mary actually appeared and gave messages to people. These messages haven’t been approved by the Church, but it’s because they are still going on today, but either way, I found it a place of peace and Mary encountered me here. A local priest offered to pay for my flight, and I reluctantly accepted, not looking forward to hanging out with a bunch of Catholics for a week.

A few days after, an amazing man named Tony Foy called the home. I answered the phone and he asked me how I felt about Medugorje. I ungratefully told him that I wasn’t really looking forward to it, and he said, “Well be open, you never know what might happen.” It was his quick phrase said in passing that really struck me. I remember going into Matt and Cameron’s bedroom the night before and simply crying, not really knowing why, for the most part because I was unhappy. I remember telling them that I was willing to be open during Medugorje and that I would pray and go to Mass with them. Awesome.

After a few days into Medugorje, I realized things weren’t so unbearable: I prayed the rosary, went to Mass and even went to confession one evening, although it wasn’t so much confession as it was me telling the priest all of my confusion about the Catholic faith.

“If God is real, and I don’t believe in him, how would he ever accept my ‘Our Father who art in Heaven’ prayer, if I don’t even believe the words I say when I speak it?”

He replied, “Prayer isn’t just about you talking to God, it’s about God talking to you.”

Obviously, this had been my obstacle all along, why can’t I hear God? Why can’t I see God? Nevertheless, I took this advice and tried to apply it to my prayer. I decided that I needed to pray to Mary and my prayer every day from that day on was, “Mary, if God’s real, prove it.”

My brother took me to at least half of the Catholic stores that lined the streets of Medugorje, offering to buy me anything and everything I wanted. I was like, “Matt, I just want one of those decade rosary bracelets; you know the ones that you can’t really tell are rosaries?” So he bought me one. He even gave me a Bible, saying that the priest who paid for me to come to Medugorje had purchased it for me. I found out a couple of years later that Matt actually brought it and didn’t want to come across too strong!

I continued praying my daily decade for about a week, before the time came for our second trip to Canada. Matt, Cameron, Liam and I were taking this trip because my brother worked for a ministry called NET Ministries of Canada (National Evangelization Teams) at that time. Every year NET trains over 60 volunteers who spend 10 months traveling to different schools and parishes - spreading the word of God to young people, while also building up parish ministries, reaching out to French communities and evangelizing through music. Matt was a part of the team who was facilitating the training, so we packed our bags and headed to a camp just outside of Ottawa where the “Netters” were being trained before they began their year of ministry. I tagged along as the babysitter. We arrived in the evening, and I stepped into a prayer session. There was a band leading the 60 volunteers in praise and worship, and it was unlike anything I had ever seen before. They were very charismatic in their praying, most of them with their hands in the air, a lot of them spontaneously praising, singing very loudly to God, I thought they looked absolutely ridiculous! After about ten minutes I got over feeling uncomfortable and I noticed that they all looked very happy, each of them had an authentic sense of joy about them, and I started to cry. I went into the small chapel and sat in front of the Blessed Sacrament. I remember praying, “God, I don’t want to be lonely anymore, I don’t want to be looking for you in the wrong places, I want what these people here have, if what they have is you, then I pray that you would reveal yourself to me and give me the gift of faith.”

The next day, one of the staff members, Joe, was giving a talk. It was all about the love of God who became man and died for us. I had heard it all before, but this time when he gave it, I received it in a more impacting way. There was a part in the talk where Joe said, “God killed a part of himself to save you, how can you conceive that?” And then Mary answered my prayer. I didn’t hear the voice of God, I didn’t see a vision, but in that moment, I remember realizing that God is so, so, so big and all along I have been trying to fit him into my head, but he is infinite, there is no way I am ever going to 100% understand him. I cried and cried, I ran to my brother and told him the good news, that God had given me the gift of faith and for the first time in my life I knew without doubt that God was real, and that He loved me and everyone and wanted to have a relationship with me on earth and in heaven.

During the week I spent at NET Training, I got to experience Adoration, my first Confession in 5 years and the Eucharist. I learned a lot about my faith and heard from a lot of great people about their faith experience as well! As I left Canada, to head back to Australia, I knew I wanted to come back the next year and volunteer a year of my life to NET Ministries. So that’s what I did for 2 years! My first year of volunteer work was during 2009/2010 where I served on the Parish Infuse Team, which spent the year in Wetaskiwin, Alberta. My second year team during 2010/2011 was called the Massive Worship Team, which was the team that travelled the country evangelizing through music, youth rallies, and parish missions, working closely with Church bands and choirs teaching them how to use contemporary music effectively in their parishes. NET was an amazing experience for me; I fell in love with God even more, developed a daily prayer life and learned how to love those on my team. During my year with the Massive Worship team, I was able to join my two passions together, music and Jesus. In August of 2011, I moved to Ottawa and joined NET staff. In February of 2012, I released my first (non-atheist) CD! I titled it Search Party, based on a conversation with my friend Carla from Australia, after I told her of my conversion, she said “Emma, it’s just like God sends a big search party out for his children who are lost.” I LOVE writing music, I am so grateful to God for this passion, and it’s my hope that people can get something out of listening. Since then I’ve recorded my second album ‘how the other half live’ and this summer I will be starting a band with my friend Joanna from England, we’ll be recording and playing shows across the continent.

Edited by Rachel Waugh

To learn more about Emma or to listen to her music please visit her website www.emmafradd.com

If you have found this story helpful in your spiritual journey we hope you will consider sharing it. Have feedback or would like to share your story? Email us at convert@whyimcatholic.com

Catholic Revert

Scott Woltze

At the age of 18, Scott Woltze robbed three banks and was sent to prison. After his release he pursued a life as a secular academic. Then at the age of 33, he had an experience of the mercy and love of God, and reverted back to the Catholic faith.

So let’s start with the obvious question: How does an eighteen year-old come to the shocking decision to rob banks? At that time I thought I was at an impasse: I dropped out of high school after being suspended seven times my senior year, and I’d just quit my job because I couldn’t manage my anxiety amongst the ups and downs. I was still reeling from a rough childhood, and I had gradually become alienated in some deep sense from life itself, from existence, from the ultimate meaning of things. Of course now I know that all of these things add up to the fact that I was alienated from God—who I didn’t even believe in at the time. Even so, I couldn’t bear this alienation, and so I held the strange view that the radical act of robbing banks would help me break through the gray facade of life and scratch the bottom of existence. I thought that robbing banks was so out of the ordinary, such a break from the normal that it would cause a kind of metaphysical rupture and I would finally see life for what it is. I also thought that robbing banks would surely land me in prison—since I knew that nine out of ten bank robbers get caught—and that prison would give me a chance to rebuild myself. I know it sounds crazy—a wild paradox—but I was making an escape into prison as a last attempt to salvage myself. And believe it or not it actually worked and exceeded all of my desperate hopes.

Now robbing banks didn’t offer any metaphysical breakthroughs, but I did find the first two robberies novel and exhilarating. But the third robbery did not have the same effect, and I was once more thrown back upon myself—as upon a dead thing. Fortunately, by this time a fellow criminal tipped off the local Portland police that I had been robbing banks in Washington in exchange for the reward money and other considerations. The police soon raided my house, but they made an error and apprehended a friend standing outside the house instead of me. I was inside the house at the time and heard the screech of converging police cars followed by shouting. I immediately knew what was happening. I grabbed a semi-automatic rifle from under my bed and held it waist-high. I didn’t have a desire or plan to shoot it out with the police—it just seemed like that’s what bank robbers are supposed to do when the police arrive—you go and grab your gun. I held the gun for a moment, and it was cold and heavy. Then a bright thought of hope flashed through my mind, “I don’t want to die—I’m young!” I threw the gun back under the bed and ran out the back door wearing only boxer shorts. I was arrested a short time later.

After my arrest I was immediately full of joy and relief. I suppose I looked like someone who was just released from prison, and not someone who was going away for a while. In fact, the in-take officer at the jail found my behavior so unusual that he wrote on the back of my in-take form that I might be crazy, or what he called “a little 1…2…3…4”. What the officer didn’t know was that I had a new lease on life. I was alive, young, and would now spend the next few years trying to put myself back together. And so I happily told the detectives everything they wanted to know, and was relieved to confess and hold nothing back. I threw myself on the mercy of the court, and though my complete cooperation was not a strategic move, it actually had the effect of netting me the lowest possible sentence. Unfortunately, while the judge had some hopes for my rehabilitation, the state did not, and so they opted to send me to a maximum-security prison. The prison officials thought it was best to gather most of the “bad apples” in the same place, and so they stocked one particular prison, Clallam Bay, full of angry young men and hardened cons. It was known among inmates as a “gladiator school”, and that would be my new home.

Now the common view is that getting sent to a maximum-security prison is the worst thing that could happen to an eighteen year-old, but like most things in life, the truth is more complicated. In prison there are basically two kinds of inmates: those who are welcomed into and enjoy the benefits of convict society—that little society that convicts create for themselves despite whatever the prison staff are up to—and those who are effectively ostracized and serve their time on the edge such as sex offenders, “snitches” and the “weak” or “scared”. Since there is a dramatic difference in the quality of life between the outcasts and those on the inside—the so-called “solid cons”—my future depended upon where I would come to stand.

I knew it was crucial to make the right first impression since mistakes have a long shelf-life in prison and your reputation can follow you from prison to prison. The solid cons—the inmates who basically ran the prison—watched me and gradually put me through a series of subtle tests in order to sift through my character and determine what kind of inmate I was. They observed whom I sat with in the chow hall, how I acted on the weight pile, and how I reacted to tense situations. They kept me at arms length as they weighed whether this “youngster” was one of them: someone who was dependable, cool-headed, tough as well as honest and respectful to fellow cons, or whether I was a loudmouth or frightened or unreliable. After watching me for several weeks, I was grudgingly welcomed into convict society. But what began at first as a grudging acceptance, turned into real friendship and a sense of community and solidarity.

My secure place in convict society gave me the peace to try to sort out who I was and find my place in the world. I thought that by reading books that were considered wise or meaningful, I could clear away my confusion and set my life on a clear path.

As soon as the fog cleared after my arrest, I began my self-rehabilitation by picking up a Bible. I thought it best to give God—if He even existed—the first shot at my redemption, and so I began by revisiting my Catholic roots. I attended the Catholic communion service and read the Gospels day and night. I was really taken by the Gospels—the words seemed to zip off the page as though they were gently charged with electricity. There was only one problem. I understood that the Gospels were calling me to a life of simplicity, patience and mercy—a radical offering of the self—but I had already vowed years before that I would never be at the mercy of any one again. This created a visible tension within me, and as I would walk around the prison meditating over the sweet words of Jesus, my fists would pulse and clench, ready to pound the first person that disrespected me. Believing in the Gospels made me feel vulnerable and now something had to give. At last I decided to walk away from Jesus, and not because I was convinced the Gospels were untrue, but because I thought, “Who can follow this?”

Once I walked away from Christ, I quickly found the path that I desired. I found a way to build myself up by relying on my own strength and talents, and not some unseen God. I eagerly examined philosophy and literature books for answers to all the big questions: the nature of human life, the way to happiness, the qualities of virtue and integrity. I soon settled into a long romance with the largely secular classics of Western Civilization, and this romance would last fifteen years or up until the day of my conversion experience. At the time, I thought of these efforts as laying the foundation stone for after my release; when I would set aside the solid convict and build a life around college studies.

When I was released in 1995, I was still rough around the edges, but people sensed that they should give me a wide berth, and so I was able to avoid bar-fights and other mischief. I was still only twenty-one, and so I left prison full of hope and determination. I dreamed of a career as a professor or a fellow at a think tank, and this seemed possible as I had finally achieved some discipline with the help of long hours of independent study. I enrolled full-time at Portland Community College, and after two years of perfect grades and a perfect score on the verbal section of the SAT, I was accepted into Reed College, a small, local liberal arts college. It is best-known as the college that Steve Jobs dropped out of to found Apple Computer, but it also offered an elite program in the very books that I had come to love, and was known as a breeding-ground for future professors. After my graduation, I was accepted into some doctoral programs in political science, and chose the University of Michigan.

At this point it would be thought that I was at the zenith of my life as I had marched up the echelons of higher academia, but just as I achieved my greatest success, my sense of drive and optimism began to falter. The problem was that while my life after prison looked great on paper, in my moral life I had practiced one betrayal after another. Now instead of believing in my future and the story of an ex-con made good, I had come to the point where I could barely look at myself in the mirror. Moreover, I had also become disillusioned with all the ideals and all the goods that I had strived after in order to give my life hope and meaning. With the end of yet another long-term relationship, I finally knew that a woman’s beauty, charm, intellect, care and comfort—as well as the hope of having children someday—could not give me peace and joy if I didn’t have some peace first. Like many men, the mystery and beauty of women had been my great idol, and like all idols, it was a god that failed. I also came to lose hope in the prospect of a fulfilling academic career and the joys of the life of the mind. My field of political and moral philosophy was hopelessly splintered, and even though we all agreed on what the “great books” were, there was very little consensus after that. It was as if a new Tower of Babel had replaced the Ivory Tower, and everyone was talking past each other. Nevertheless, I would continue to slog through my doctoral studies until the day of my conversion, but without the passion that I had known while poring over books in my prison cell.

On an April morning in 2007 everything changed. I had just submitted my students’ grades the night before, and I decided to mow my lawn to celebrate the end of winter. But my heart was troubled. Through typical selfishness I’d begun to spoil my friendship with a young woman. As I mowed the lawn, I kept saying to myself, “What is wrong with you? Are you ever going to learn? You’re 33, grow up!” I’d often had that conversation with myself in the past, hating how I treated people and who I was becoming. But this time really was different. Before I had been like St. Augustine: “O’ Lord, help me to be pure, but not just yet.” But this time I was of one mind, and I committed myself to a new path. But God had had enough of my plans—plans that were always self-contained and relied on my own resources, my own designs and my own upside-down worldview. But He honored my spirit of repentance, and so from this episode full of ugly habits God brought forth His beauty, His purity and His mercy. As I turned a corner with the lawnmower, all of a sudden, my whole person resounded with a divine intervention. A calm voice displaced all other thoughts and sensations, and, presented fully and clearly on my mind, the voice said,

“I love you, and I forgive you.”

As the words concluded, an immense love that I had never thought possible ignited in my chest like a smoldering furnace. It was a consuming love, but also gentle, and it slowly spread from my heart up to my head and down to my toes. Along with this love, God placed in my mind—as one places things on a shelf—two thoughts or convictions. The first thought was that I simply knew He removed the chip on my shoulder: the mistrust, the wariness and the fierceness of an ex-convict. And the second thought, that God’s promise—His intention—was to eventually restore me to the little boy that I had been 25 years before. Before my sins and the sins of others had left me the disfigured person I had become.

Over the course of the next three days the divine love slowly drained out of me—like a bucket with a small hole. I spent those days trying to move beyond shock into understanding. Who was this God? This God who intimately knew me, and loved me—even when I seemed unlovable? I couldn’t imagine what this simple God of love had to do with all the baggage of revealed religion—all of the contested doctrines and history. And so I avoided organized religion and began to settle into the view that God is up there and He loves me, and I just need to be a better person, but my life wouldn’t substantially change. That’s a common view today, but it’s not the plan of Christ and His Church: for we are called to radical conversion, to put aside the old self and put on the mind of Christ. God in his mercy wouldn’t allow me to fall into this complacent theism, and so he promptly shocked me out of it through the following experience.

On the third day the love passed, and I decided to go running late at night with my dogs at a wooded park. Just as I arrived, an evil thought passed through my mind, and then another, and then another. Each thought was more outrageous than the last—like a rising crescendo of evil. I was stunned—not just by the wickedness of the thoughts—but that these thoughts clearly came from just outside of me—as if some unseen entity was subtly pushing them into my mind. I immediately guessed that there must be something like evil spirits, and that God was allowing me to clearly distinguish their actions on me from my own thoughts. I got out of the car and started to run at a frantic pace. As I ran I kept saying over and over, “Are there demons? There must be demons.”

Then just as I emerged from a hollow of trees into an intersection of paths and dirt roads, God answered my question. Spread out below a large moon wrapped in smoky yellow clouds, a thousand furious demons streamed down the road toward me. They appeared like animal humanoids; like a thousand different failed genetic experiments. They were restrained at a distance of about fifty yards. There was a kind of spiritual de-militarized zone between us, and I knew I was in God’s care—that He was showing me something under His protection.

For several seconds, God had raised the veil that separates the natural and super-natural—revealing a cosmic drama that earlier ages had taken for granted, but that for me was unthinkable. The very first thought I had when I saw the demons was that the typical medieval farmer had a more accurate understanding of our human condition—its perils and possibilities—than all of the smartest people I’d ever known. Modern philosophers, psychologists, social scientists, and artists had got the basic picture wrong because their eyes were fixed only on this passing world. Just as our “best and brightest” can’t fathom the infinite love, mercy and purity of God—and our invitation to share in the divine feast—so they can’t fathom the reality of evil: a spiritual, personified evil that wars against us day and night whether we know it or not.

From the fact of demons, and the fact that God was one—a monotheistic God—and not part of a pantheon of gods, I reasoned that one of the religions that claim Abraham as their father must be true: Judaism, Christianity or Islam, and so that ruled out the Eastern religions. But now which religion? They couldn’t all be true since they each made important claims that the other would deny; particularly over the question, ‘who was Jesus?’ With that thought I went to bed.

When I awoke the next morning I was exhausted. Everything had changed in such a short time, and I just wanted to quietly sort things out. But God had a different plan. As I lay in bed, I was startled to find that a small, circular image obstructed my field of vision. In the upper left corner of my line of sight, about the size of a silver dollar held twelve inches away, was the likeness of a man set against a brilliant gold backdrop. The image was present no matter where I looked—like it was stamped inside of my mind—and it was there even when I closed my eyes. When I focused in on the image, concentrated on it, the colors would seem to literally come alive and the man would sharpen into focus. But when I was focused elsewhere—like driving—the image would gradually dim until it was like a colored splotch on a pair of glasses. The man in the image was about my age, and he appeared from the waist-up dressed in a wine-colored robe. His arms were at his side, but all you wanted to look at was the man’s face. The man had an immense vitality that was life itself. And yet I could never fully see his face when I focused on it. When I switched my attention elsewhere, I was conscious of the fullness of the face, and yet when I tried to focus in on it, the mouth and the eyes were always obscured. It was like the problem of looking into the noonday sun. When you see the sun indirectly, you see it simply and completely there in the sky, but when you try to look directly into it, your eyes fail.

The image would remain in my mind for ten days. After a few days, the persistence of the image began to weigh on me day and night. On the one hand, I felt like I was failing God—missing a clue that was right in front of me. On the other hand, I felt like I was being pursued without a chance of escape, like the man was staring at me, and that I was being branded or claimed in some way. What was I to do? In a state of desperation I focused again on the picture. The image grew radiant as always, and then something happened. The man’s thick hair lightly blew as if in a gentle breeze. I couldn’t believe it. So I looked again, and again wisps of his hair wafted in a breeze—while the air around me was still. The thought hit me: “That’s not a picture of a man—that’s a real man. That man’s alive!” And it was obvious that he wasn’t simply alive in our familiar world, but that his life transcended all of our scientific categories, and that he must be alive in Heaven. This increased my desire to know who the man was, but the truth is, I knew who He was—even if I did try to hide it from myself. And now that I knew it was a living man looking at me, I couldn’t keep up the self-deception. Even if I couldn’t see Him clearly, I knew He could see me clearly, and so I admitted, “It’s Jesus. Yes, it’s Jesus.”

My first step in exploring the Christian faith was to open a Bible an evangelical had given me, and compare it to the God I had just come to know. I opened to the “Gospel of John” with a fear of disappointment, a fear of not finding my beloved God. I had remembered the skeptical arguments of modern scripture scholars, and I wondered whether the Gospels were a faithful account of Jesus. After only a handful of pages, my fear subsided. How Jesus was portrayed and what He said, the sense He gave you of Himself, was true to the God who had rescued me. And even better news; the Gospels contained an enormous wealth of insights into God and the Christian life.

At the same time, I felt a need to worship on Sundays along with other Christians. I wanted to face toward the Lord and adore and quietly rest in Him. I yearned to feel His presence again. In short, I needed traditional liturgy. I had attended the Traditional Latin Mass a handful of times as a child and then twice for a medieval humanities field trip while I was at Reed College. I remembered the whole experience challenged you to think in different ways and in different terms. The mass was focused on and trustingly offered up to an unseen God, and it had a kind of ancient beauty that is rarely seen in an age like this. I also remembered that the preaching there was different—the hard sayings of Christ and his apostles were taken seriously, and the grace of God was understood to be the real source of change—where the real action and hope of sinners resides. This very different, unworldly aspect of the parish—for God’s ways are not our ways—gave me hope that I might find the dwelling place of the one, true God in the Catholic Church. I decided to attend the Traditional Latin Mass and if that didn’t feel like home, then I was going to look up the Eastern Orthodox.

So I searched online for local masses in the area, and found several options. I decided on St. Josaphat’s in Detroit—a beautiful old parish built by Polish immigrants. Before mass I was nervous. I held the Latin-English missal and wondered what I was doing there: “Is this a good idea? Am I going to be able to follow along?” Then a bell rang and I stood along with everyone else. Then the congregation and the cantor hidden behind me up in the loft began to sing the “Asperges Me”. All it took was the chanting of the first two words, and I knew that I was in the house of God. All the sights, smells and sounds, and a feel of the sacred beyond the mere senses, brought me back to His presence, and I knew I was finally home.

Edited by Rachel Waugh

Thank you for reading, and may you know the peace of the Lord. A longer version of this story can be found at Scott’s blog: www.bringustolife.blogspot.com

If you have found this story helpful in your spiritual journey we hope you will consider sharing it. Have feedback or would like to share your story? Email us at convert@whyimcatholic.com

New Age Convert

Cari Donaldson

After being raised Presbyterian Cari became involved in the new age movement while attending Michigan State. Cari Donaldson is a wife and homeschooling mother of six residing in Connecticut.

There are parallels between conversion stories and birth stories. Both start with a tiny seed, planted in darkness, result in the birth of a new creation, and involve blood, sweat and tears. And while I resisted writing the story of my conversion to Catholicism for a long time, it seems fitting that when I finally did so, it would be toward the end of my sixth pregnancy.

While writing this has involved slightly less blood than the birth of my children, it was accompanied by yelling and tears. There is nothing more frustrating than trying to convey your experience with the Word when it refuses to fit nicely into any words. So I ask you, like all mothers presenting their newborn to the public for the first time, please overlook defects of style and appearance, and focus instead on the potential, the innocence, the love that created, sustained, and labored to bring the finished product into the world.

______________________

I was raised, in no particular order:

· With both mother and father, who modeled what a strong marriage can look like

· With one sibling, my brother, who used to be younger than I am, but since I’ve stopped aging, he’s now older

· In a suburb of Detroit, in a dark brick ranch my grandfather helped build and my mom grew up in

· Going to the same Presbyterian church my mom went to when she was a child

We went to church regularly, and I attended both Sunday school and youth group. Any other religious expression was an individual pursuit. I don’t remember reading the Bible as a family, but I do remember my gold foil “Good News Bible”, with stick figures and crinkly onionskin paper. I don’t remember praying much as a family, outside of grace before Thanksgiving dinner, but I do remember, from a very early age, talking to God.

Specifically, I remember talking to God every night and asking Him to “put my Grandpa on”. I’d wait, imagining God going to get my Grandpa Bob, who had died when I was five. I’d sit patiently in silence, until I imagined Grandpa coming to the prayer line, and we’d chat for a bit. Then God would get back on, and we’d say our goodbyes for the night.

I remember my childhood religious formation being strong enough to forge that vital element- a prayer life, something I never ever lost.

I remember the rest of my childhood formation being tenuous enough that I had slipped it off by college.

My best friend in high school gave me a book to read right before I left for Michigan State. It was called Judas My Brother, by Frank Yerby. Briefly, it is a book that strives to strip Jesus, and by extension, Christianity, of anything Divine or mystical. It has footnotes and endnotes galore, and to a 17-year-old girl with little grounding in theology, it was a revelation. With no education in Christian apologetics to help me critically consume the book, I was happy to embrace the whole thing. The ability to toss aside some Bronze-age set of patriarchal ethics all while spouting off quotes from a historical novel is extremely attractive to a new college student. So, convinced that at its heart, Christianity was nothing more than a monstrous tale of a monstrous God who sacrificed His own Son to Himself to appease His monstrous anger, I chucked it all.

More or less.

I still prayed. Every night. There was that remnant of my childhood faith that I couldn’t even begin to shake. Even if the prayer was nothing more than, “Thank you for this day, goodnight,” I still said it. I didn’t think too hard about who was on the receiving end of my prayer, but I always knew that there was Someone to whom I was grateful for another day of life.

Atheism or agnosticism were never serious considerations. At no point during my spiritual wandering did I contemplate either of them very long. Where I was, at this point, was a theist. Nothing more.

I think that when a person says, “I believe in God, but I don’t believe in religion,” there are only two options left for her. The first is slip off into profound lukewarmness and to begin viewing God like a magic lamp, taken out when there is a wish to be granted. The other option is to keep looking for a deeper relationship with God, which means you have to keep coming up against the one thing you’d rather avoid.

I wasn’t looking to distance God even further. I wanted more. And so, like someone who keeps checking out the window to see if their family is pulling in the driveway yet, I kept returning to the subject of Religion. What was God? Who was God? What was the relationship between religion and God? Did we need religion? Did we need God? All the typical questions that we humans ask ourselves, and, like many others, I had no objective method to use in finding answers. I just knew there was something missing, and that something was God. I also knew that I didn’t want to run the risk of finding Him in some religion that was going to tell me things like “right” and “wrong”.

Pride is fun, isn’t it?

So, looking for a deeper relationship with God that didn’t attempt to burden me with annoying lessons on morality, I found myself becoming more and more enamored with the New Age movement.

Since the only experience I have with universities is limited to what I lived out on Michigan State University’s campus from 1993-1998, I will make sure that I don’t paint all universities with the same brush. So when I say that I found college a very hospitable environment for New Age influences, please understand that I mean this only for a particular place during a particular time.

From the occult “Triple Goddess” bookstore a little ways off campus to the pagan student alliance on it, there was a world of New Age, pagan, occult information at my fingertips. Now, keep in mind that this was the early 90s, and the Internet was more or less limited to telnet and Gopher. So when I say “a world of information at my fingertips”, know that my fingers were much shorter 20 years ago than they would be now. In other words, if I wanted to learn about it, I had to do so through a book or a real live person.

At first, I kept my searches confined to books. Not quite ready to actually talk to another person, I would spend time at the campus library, reading poorly researched works about ritual prostitution in ancient Babylon, or information on the Celtic pantheon derived from source information of conquering invaders. I had as little concern for scholarly integrity as many of the authors of these books did, and information derived from New Age novels was viewed as reliable as that from non-fiction.

In other words, at this stage of my spiritual quest, critical analysis was not part of my vocabulary.

Eventually, my one-track reading theme caught the attention of a friend, who had grown up in the area. She introduced me to the occult bookshop in town, “Triple Goddess”. Here I was able to get more contemporary literature on all manner of New Agey topics, and for an almost unlimited amount of new material, all I had to do was part with both my money and any desire for responsibly researched, verifiable information.

The hallmark of the New Age movement is a do-it-yourself mentality. Whatever whim, interest, or fancy strikes you, there is some way to incorporate it into your customized belief system. Drawn to reincarnation? Find yourself a past life reader who can tell you who you were previously. Want to cultivate a friendship with your animal totem? Grab a book on guided meditation that will take you on a vision quest to do just that. As the signs posted prominently in the bookshop reminded customers, “Following Your Bliss” was the prime directive. There was no evidence that apologetics was an area of concern.

Conceivably, a person could continue like this for the rest of their lives, happily moving from one metaphysical practice to another, or from one deity to the next. Certainly this is what I did for a long while, stopping somewhere until the gnawing sense of emptiness grew unbearable and I started looking for something new to fill it. I was searching for a way to establish a firm relationship with God, yet paradoxically, the more options I was given to do so, the weaker that relationship became.

Finally, I grew desperate enough to seek out other people; to set down the books to go see what I could find in the fellowship of fellow New Age/pagan/occult/notmembers of Organized Religion. I went to a meeting of the campus pagan support group, where I met half dozen or so people who should have been my kindred spirits. I should have felt some connection with them, these folks on a similar journey as I was. Maybe if we weren’t exactly on the same road, we’d at least be able to shout at each other across the distance.

What I found were six people with six wildly different ideas on everything remotely connected to God. One woman worshipped an obscure Egyptian goddess who had a name, but which I’ve since forgotten. This was in stark relief to the only male in attendance, who worshipped a trio of Norse gods, the names of which he insisted were so sacred they could only be revealed to those who had been properly initiated. There were a few women who worshipped a vague sort of Earth goddess type, and someone who was an atheist, but came to the meetings because no one else would believe that she was in communication with alien life forms.

I was immediately struck by the fact that I wasn’t going to find spiritual guidance here. What I found was a hodgepodge of religious beliefs not substantially different than what I’d find while waiting at the dentist’s office, or while grocery shopping. Plus, like payments expected at the dentist or the grocery store, the pagan support group wanted me to cough up money, $20 to cover membership fees.

However, the whole thing wasn’t a wash. The experience got me thinking about the nature of worship. After all, to worship something is a pretty big deal. Even the constant misuse of the word in popular culture can’t water down its meaning completely. To worship something means to view it in a profound sense of admiration. You admire the object of worship in a manner that you admire nothing else. Once I articulated this, fatal cracks in the New Age façade formed. The nature of pantheons, to which most of the deities in pagan religious structures belong, is a familial one. That means individual gods and goddesses were created from previous gods and goddesses. Think about all the Greek myths you learned in school. There was a family tree there, and you could trace Athena back to Zeus, back to Cronus, back and back, and what you had was a series of creatures. It seemed foolish to me to admire a created deity in a manner that I admired nothing else, since that deity owed its existence to another entity. It would be like admiring the Mona Lisa above all other things, even the person whose skill created the painting. Worship, to make any sense at all, had to be directed at the original source.

Most of the pagan gods and goddesses that have any historically documented pedigree can trace their lineage ultimately to some deification of the Earth. I didn’t need to be a geologist or an astronomer to know that the Earth was a created object as well, and so the trail couldn’t end there. Where to look next, however, I couldn’t even begin to guess.

My unquestioning love affair with all things New Agey ended at the same time my stint in college did. I left MSU with a bachelor’s degree in English and a certificate to teach middle and high school students, and I left the New Age movement with a vague set of metaphysical philosophies and a weaker grasp on the nature of God than what I started with.

I left college in May of 1998. By the next month, I had a teaching position in the same school district I went to as a child. The man I’d loved since I was 14 proposed to me in October of that same year, and we moved in together in February of 1999, with the wedding date set for August of that same year.

To say that it was a busy time in my life would be, in retrospect, an understatement.

Moving from the extended adolescence that college allows to something resembling responsible adulthood meant that I could, for a while anyway, shelve the whole search for a resting place in God. I did so with relief. I still maintained a set of holdovers from my pagan years- a belief in reincarnation and a vague pantheism being most notable. Unable to figure out how God wanted us to relate to one another, I gave up trying.

But then time for serious wedding plans came. My first choice was an extremely small wedding of no more than 50 or so people, held entirely in my parents’ backyard- it was a beautiful setting, and full of comforting memories; I couldn’t imagine having it anywhere else. My parents, sensibly concerned about a number of logistical and potential problems a home wedding brings with it, encouraged Ken and me to come up with another option.

We couldn’t think of one. Neither of us wanted to elope, and the thought of the actual ceremony taking place in a dreary, municipal setting was depressing. Lack of options meant that when the Presbyterian church of our childhood was suggested, we couldn’t think of anything compelling to counter it with. What it lacked in religious significance for me, it made up in sentimental ones. After all, Ken and I had both gone there growing up. And while we went to the same school, we were in different grades, so it was the church’s youth group that was the stage for our fledgling romance. Marrying in that church seemed a sweet nod to the physical location that brought us together.

The pastor who had worked there when we attended had since gone to another church, but Ken and I thought we’d see if he’d be willing to come back to officiate the wedding. We met with him in his office at his current church and he agreed to do so. He handed us a packet of common wedding vows and said that we could customize the ceremony however we felt comfortable.

I took him at his word and spent the next several nights sitting at the coffee table with scissors and glue, cutting one phrase from one version of the wedding ceremony, and another phrase from a different one. In every version, however, I made sure to remove the name of Jesus from the proceedings. I was fine marrying in a church. I was fine having our childhood pastor officiate. I was fine mentioning God in the ceremony, but I would not allow Christ to be mentioned. It was too religious, too Christian. A non-specific “God” could be invoked and that was as far as I was willing to go.

Both the pastor and Ken agreed to my editing job, and so we were married in a Presbyterian church in a ceremony that banned any reference to Jesus.

Despite the changes in my life, I found my thoughts returning with increasing frequency toward God. Having found nothing particularly useful in New Age teachings, absolute desperation turned my attention to organized religion. After all, I reasoned, if a religious institution was going to have staying power and a sizable audience, two things it needed to fall under the “organized” category in my mind, it probably had something logical and useful to say.

With summer vacation staring me in the face, I figured I’d start learning what I could. Since at the time I believed in reincarnation, I thought I’d start with Buddhism and Hinduism.

A brief study of Buddhism quickly revealed to me that it was more of a philosophical system, and in its purest form, not concerned with the existence of a deity at all. Since it was my clear experience that there was a God, and the whole point of this excruciating search was to grow closer to Him/Her/It, I left Buddhism to its own devices and turned to Hinduism instead.

The problem I found with Hinduism stemmed from its origins. The majority of world religions have a particular individual as the founder. Buddhism had Siddhartha Gautama, Islam had Mohammed, Christianity had Jesus, and Judaism had Abraham, Issac and Jacob. For each of these groups, there is a way to find what the original intent of the religion was. You can read what the founders themselves had to say and glean information about the theology from that.

Not so with Hinduism, which grew from the religious practices of immigrating tribes. Hinduism wasn’t “founded” so much as it “evolved”, and so tracking down the original vision of its theology proved impossible, because there wasn’t one. What there was was a muddled sense of accepted confusion about the nature of God that I couldn’t wrap my mind around. I didn’t need my understanding of God to be more obscure. Additionally, Hinduism presented the same problem to me as did paganism- namely so many of the deities were created creatures and therefore unsuitable to me as an object of worship.

Islam presented a problem almost immediately. Even before 9/11, there was a tone to discussions about Islam that made it difficult for me to know what was theology and what was politics. Additionally, I kept running into the insistence that unless one was reading the Qur’an in its native Arabic, the translation was invalid. Something about all this struck me as almost Gnostic in its secretiveness, and I put aside Islam as a serious consideration.

Judaism was next. But besides the obvious fact that the form of Judaism practiced in the Bible didn’t exist anymore, it felt too close to Christianity. It was like declaring your independence from your parents, but going to live rent free with your grandfather. I spent time reading the Old Testament and feeling more and more resentful about the whole thing.

Around this time, three significant things happened. The first was one day, in a fit of exasperation over having to listen to the spiritual whining of his wife for the millionth time, Ken said, “Why don’t you just pick something to believe and believe in it?” Bear in mind, Ken never said anything like that to me in regards to my religious angst. So when he finally could take no more, his words sunk in even deeper. What was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I just pick something that fit with my world-view and settle in there? Why did I have to make everything so damn complicated? Surely there were enough people in my acquaintance who insisted that all one needed to do in life was be a good person and that would be enough. Why couldn’t I just do that?

That was the kick in the pants I needed to convince me that something beyond myself was spurring this search. Left to my own devices, I would have tossed the whole God question to the curb and followed a path that offered maximum good feelings with minimum work on my part. But I’d tried that, and it didn’t work. It didn’t make the gnawing sense of something missing go away. So as much as I wanted to chuck the whole thing, Ken’s words made me realize that there was no rest for the wicked, and I couldn’t stop this search until I found truth. It was this realization, that I couldn’t give up searching even though I wanted to, that shaped some of my more embarrassing religious experiments of that time period. Things like “baptizing” our infant daughter ourselves at a local park one weekend. My heart was in the right place, but I can say that it was a great relief, years later, to learn that since I hadn’t used the Trinitarian formula (of course I hadn’t. I think the actual wording called her “a child of the Universe”), she wasn’t validly baptized, but would be, the actions of her hippy dippy mother notwithstanding.

The next thing was we moved into our first house, which was half a block away from a Catholic church. There was a statue of Our Lady outside, next to a playground, and I found myself staring at the statue when I’d take Lotus to the park to play. Whenever I went for a run or a bike ride, I always made sure my path crossed that statue, and I’d pause for a moment, and stare at that image, the thoughts of my heart and mind a mystery even to myself.

The final thing that happened during that period of my life was Ken got his first transfer. We would move away from suburban Detroit, a place I’d lived all my life, to Mississippi of all places. Mississippi! The absurdity of the whole thing was almost too much to comprehend. What on earth would a good Midwestern girl do in the Deep South?

Although the move from Michigan to Mississippi was sought after, welcomed, and wanted, I did not adjust gracefully. What I did do was suffer from major culture shock for the first year or so.

Major. Culture. Shock.

Of course, now that I’m writing this from a distance of 1227 miles and seven years, I have a different perspective, one that is too colored by nostalgia to probably be entirely accurate. But I can remember one thing with laser-like precision that drove me frantic about my new Southern neighbors.

And that was their open, unabashed practice of religion.

This, coupled with the notamyth reality of Southern hospitality, meant that I was confronted with my religious agonies on a daily basis. Within a week of moving in, we had met every single family on our street. They came with flawless charm and goodwill, bearing some housewarming gift, and the conversation went the absolute same every time:

“Hi! I’m So-and-so, your neighbor two doors down on the left! It’s nice to meet you!”

Here I would accept the baked good and/or poinsettia (we moved into the house in December of 2004), tell them my name, and invite them into my house, which was in shocking unpacked shambles. The neighbor would politely decline to come in, to my extreme gratitude (see what I mean about Southern hospitality?), and would continue The Script:

“So have you found a church yet?”

No. I am not kidding you. This was the second question from everyone. Hi, what’s your name, by the way, have you found a church yet? As if they could see right into my heart and knew the one question that would cause me the most discomfort.

Normally, I would mutter something vague and start opening the door wider, just so one of the dogs would escape and I could end the conversation by chasing after it. If this failed, the new neighbor/torturer would press on, asking what kind of church I went to back home. When I had no answer for them, they’d invite me to their church. Repeatedly. With printouts of service schedules for me to reference later.

I remember calling my mom in a tizzy one day over this affront to my Midwestern sensibilities. She wisely advised me to tell them that Ken and I were married in a Presbyterian church and play the odds that the neighbor was either Baptist or Pentecostal, who would then assume I’d found a suitable replacement in Mississippi, and leave me alone.

Brilliant! I did just that, and it worked like a charm. Until I met the last neighbors, who were (of course) Presbyterian. Who then offered to have the pastor of their church over one day so we could meet him. Who started calling every few days to see if I’d checked with Ken to figure out a good time to do so. Backed into an absolute corner, I remember that Ken’s parents, who lived 20 minutes away, were also Presbyterians. In a fit of blind panic one day, I told the well-intentioned neighbors that we were going to my in-law’s church and thanks for the offer, but we were good.

That got them off my back. But hell. Now we needed to go to my in-law’s church once, so I wasn’t lying.

Now I had to do some serious- something. Something. I didn’t even know what. All I knew was that I had this giant chip on my shoulder regarding all things Christian-related, and it was starting to get very heavy.

I thought that it was time to apply my non-negotiables to Christianity and eliminate it from consideration like I’d done all other organized religions so far. It seemed fair. So, starting with the notion of not being willing to worship a created object, I turned the powers of the Internet to the question of Christ. Christ, who I’d firmly shut out of our wedding, was, as far as I understood Him to be, a created creature. After all, He was the Son of the Father, and sons are creatures, so this should be pretty cut and dry.

The search engine helpfully directed me to the first chapter of John, specifically the first few verses. Then it helpfully directed me to a website where I could read these verses in about a million different translations.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

You know the phrase, “my blood ran cold”? And when you feel it, you’re so scared that it’s like your blood has actually turned to ice water?

There is an opposite feeling, but I don’t know if there’s an idiom for it. It’s when you’re so suddenly overwhelmed with a sense of safety that your blood feels like it’s made of sunlight. That’s what I felt when I read those words in John.

Oh, I didn’t understand it. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a bible scholar, and I’m certainly not a theologian, but I was able to glean one thing from that passage: Christianity didn’t teach that Christ was a created thing. He was in existence from before time, with God, God Himself.

Immediately following on the heels of that discovery was one even more meaningful for me. Christ was a Word. A Word.

He was the conversation God wanted to have with me about Himself, a conversation He had waited so patiently to have while I flailed about like a three year old on a Halloween sugar crash temper tantrum, kicking the kitchen floor and sticking my fingers in my ears and alternating screams about “Talk to me!” and “I don’t want to listen!”

I sat there for a while, staring at the computer screen. All this time I wanted God to talk to me and then I went around doing things like censoring His Word from my wedding.

Christianity had cleared the first of my ridiculous hurdles. I was interested in seeing what it revealed to me in a church service, and so the next Sunday, I found myself stepping foot in a church for the first time since Ken and I were married.

My first church experience in more than three years was lovely. The people were welcoming, the pastor’s sermon insightful, and the surroundings tasteful and reverent. Even the choir, who performed traditional hymns, was pretty, and I’m not much of a music lover.

Looking back now, I’m not sure what I expected to experience there. There were no extremes in response; I didn’t burst into flames upon arrival nor have divine revelations during the service. Ken and I were both willing to visit again, and I found nothing there to send me running from Christianity.

But my heart still wasn’t settled. So at nights, when the baby was asleep, and Ken at work, I continued my obsessive searching on the Internet. I wanted to know more about Christianity. I wasn’t even sure what it was that I wanted to learn, that’s how little I knew about it.

One night, my searches led me to a picture of a Bouguereau Madonna that made me stop dead in my tracks.

Growing up, I distinctly remember a Bouguereau painting in the Detroit Institute of Arts that I loved. It was called The Nut Gatherers, and it reminded me of my cousin and me.

I had a print of that painting for a large portion of my childhood, and so when I saw the same artist's Madonna, it struck me as particularly meaningful and intimate.

And the painting! Many images of Jesus’ mother I’d seen portrayed her as something so meek and simpering that she almost looked feebleminded, but this one! This Madonna was regal. She seemed fierce. She kept a laser-like focus on Christ. She was not a Mary you wanted to mess with.

(just look at her. She's ready to lay the smackdown on John the Baptist if he messes with her Son.)

I stared at that picture and then realized what it was that I wanted. I wanted to have the same laser focus on God that Mary had in that painting. I wanted that iron will, unshakably fixed on God. I wanted a faith that was, like Mary’s, epic. And once I’d articulated this in my own heart, I knew somehow, that Mary herself would lead me there. I was filled with complete trust that if I followed her example, she would show me how to love God, and how to establish that relationship with Him I’d been longing for my whole life.

Now, finally, I had a focus in my search. I just had to copy Mary long enough to figure out where I was supposed to go. I thought of it a bit like shadowing someone on a job.

I started with the only place I knew to go to see what Mary did- the Bible. I started reading for the first time with an eye for instruction, rather than a way to pass childhood sermons by looking for “the weird parts” in the Old Testament. The more I read, the more I became comfortable with Christ. He stopped being a sticking point with me, something that I viewed as “standing in the way of my relationship with God”. He started being Someone who loved me- Someone who demonstrated in a way that a weak and limited human could understand what God’s love meant. Until I saw God as a human, I never appreciated how impossible it is for humans to grasp the enormity of God’s commitment to us.

I read everything I could get my hands on. With only one child at the time, and a husband whose work schedule ran from 3 p.m. until 4 a.m., I had lots and lots of time to do so. When I couldn’t get to the library, I ran Internet searches, trying to follow Mary’s footsteps and walk a path as close to Jesus as I could get.

And then the path began to get bumpy. And poorly marked. And populated with lots and lots of people telling me contradicting directions.

In my reading, it soon became clear to me that there were about seventeen bazillion different theories, opinions, doctrines, and teachings on Christ and what He wanted His followers to do. One group claimed that the Trinity was an idolatrous creation, and it was Jesus alone running the show, yet I could easily find half a dozen groups denouncing that teaching. Another group insisted that drinking and dancing were hell-worthy offenses; other groups didn’t seem so bothered with it.

I vividly remembered a conversation I’d had with a loved one a few years previously, who was agonizing over officially joining a church she really connected with. The problem arose from the fact that this new church only accepted full immersion baptism as valid, and although she’d been baptized as a young adult in another church, it wasn’t through immersion, and so this new church wouldn’t recognize it.

I marveled at that and grew steadily horrified about its implications. If something as necessary and fundamental as baptism couldn’t be agreed on, how could we humans know that we were getting any of it right? It seemed to me that anyone with an opinion about God and an audience willing to listen to it could start his own church. And all these churches teaching contradictory things certainly made it difficult to reconcile Jesus’ promise to Peter, that the gates of Hell would not prevail upon the church He was clearly establishing.

As I puzzled through that, I was also trying to get a clear answer about why even go to church at all? When Christ said He was establishing a church, did He really mean an actual, physical structure? Couldn’t I spend Sunday out in nature, giving thanks for God’s creation, and be engaging in worship? After all, what did I find at church that was found exclusively there? The Internet made accessing a multitude of pastors and their sermons a cinch, so I didn’t have to go to church to hear instruction on the Word of God. There were plenty of Bible study groups in the area, so I wasn’t dependent on a church to connect me with fellow believers. Those who very much associated worship music with their church experience could find it on the local Christian radio station every time they got into their car. Even things like marrying in a church, as my own experience showed, weren’t dependent on attendance. So what did church offer that I couldn’t get anywhere else? And even if I could find an answer to that question, there was still the 5,000 pound elephant in the room of which church?

As I start what I hope is the last installment of this story, I realize how much is missing.

There is so much more that I could say and chew over and analyze, but hopefully it's enough for now that I'm getting the bones of it down.

The wall right in front of me is covered in that chalkboard paint. And in a series of scribbled numbers, I've figured out how long it was between standing in a church at my wedding ceremony, which firmly ignored Christ, and that Easter Vigil when I stood in front of another Church and first received Him in the Holy Eucharist.

2,444 days. 6 years, 8 months, 9 days.

Don't ever doubt the power of prayer or the absolute fact that there are a multitude of souls on Earth and in Heaven who unceasingly desire a soul's return to God.

And here, the story moves along so quickly that I know I will skip things, either on purpose or accident. In my desire to get to the happy ending, I have the urge to, in the words of Prince Humperdink, "skip to the end", and thereby gloss over some pretty important, but pesky details.

I won't.

I'll pick back up where I left off in part V.- with two overwhelming questions that were gnawing away at me:

1. Why bother going to church at all? Why not just take my newfound comfort with Christ and Christianity and just be at peace with it? What did the act of going to church provide that couldn't be obtained in other, less organized, areas?

2. If there was a reason for consistent church attendance, which church should it be? Which one was right?

With growing misery and irritation, I returned to the intergoogleweb to try and find answers. I started with the denomination of my youth, Presbyterianism, but immediately came up against not only the issue of Predestination, but the fact that Presbyterians themselves couldn't agree on what it meant.

More confusion.

I halfheartedly sifted through what the Lutherans and the Methodists and the Baptists understood about themselves and God.

It just got worse.

One day, I ran into the first Chick Tract of my entire life (a happy little number called Are Roman Catholics Christians?). I'd never seen anything like this. Flipping through the pages, I remember feeling both repulsed and physically dirtied by contact with that thing. The reactions were so strong and so unexpected that the incident is firmly fixed in my mind.

Growing up, I had friends who were Catholic. My godfather is Catholic. Our neighbors were Catholic. I'd been to Catholic funerals and Catholic weddings.

None of it was enough to inspire me to learn about Catholicism. In fact, I had myself a nice, smug little set of preconceived notions about the Church that I summed up in one of my favorite phrases, "The Catholic Church is going to crumble under its own bloated weight. Maybe in our lifetime."

Oh my gosh, readers, can you imagine what it takes for me to admit this? How vicious and gleefully ignorant I was about an institution that I never bothered to learn about? I figured I knew everything I needed to know- the Church hated women, sex, non-Catholics, and science. In fact, despite my growing appreciation for Mary's faith, Catholicism never even appeared on my radar during my spiritual searches. How could it? How could I possibly consider a religion that was so out of touch with the world, so angry, so patriarchal?

And yet, reading through that ugly little tract, which vomited a level of hatred for the Church that exceeded my own stupid complaints, my reaction was one of indignance. I was offended, on behalf of a Church I knew nothing about, but still cared nothing for. For no other reason than to disprove the wild accusations of a poorly executed religious comic, I found myself turning my Internet searches to Catholicism. Not to explore the possibility that it held answers to my questions, but simply to stick it to Chick Publications.

The first thing that comes to mind was learning that the Catholic Church understood two things about religions in general and itself in particular: one, that all religions contained some aspect of the Truth. Even if it was nothing more than a memory of a shred, there was still some Truth there. Two: that the entirety of what God has revealed about Himself to human beings has been entrusted to the Catholic Church. They even had a phrase for it; "the Fullness of the Truth".

Clearly, these were not people who were going to mince words.

At first, I was astounded by the boldness of that concept. The Fullness of the Truth? Everything that God has revealed to us stupid humans, all in one place?

Impossible.

I rejected it. Maybe those Catholics weren't as horrible as the Chick Tract would draw them, but they were clearly insane.

I couldn't let the concept go. Because if Catholics believed they held the fullness of the Truth, then there would be a Truth, right? There would be clear answers on things that Protestant denominations couldn't agree on- even within their own denomination, right?

The thought was so radical, so foreign to a mind soaked in moral relativism, that I couldn't grasp it. If these Catholics were going to make a claim like this, they'd better prove it. There had better be absolutely undeniable proof that what they were teaching was God's Truth.

And so I started reading what the earliest Christians understood about Christ and the church He founded. I started down the path that is familiar to all Catholic converts- who decided what writings were Divinely inspired and meant to be included in the Bible and which writings were not? How was information on this new religion passed along to the first adherents when literacy and books were not the common things they are now? I learned about the concepts of Sola Scriptura and Sacred Tradition. I was introduced to the Early Church Fathers. I figured I'd follow the history of Catholicism from the beginning until I found something I could use to discount it- a journey I expected to be a short one.

But then I learned about the Eucharist.

For me, growing up with the grape juice and spongy bread, passed from person to person along the pews, once a month at most, the concept of Communion was a muddled one. On the one hand, in the church of my childhood, there was a sense that Communion was expected to be something outside the ordinary, but there was nothing displayed to back that up. The grape juice was Welch's, poured out into small shot glasses right before Communion services. The bread was actually Wonder Bread, cut into cubes by volunteers, and heaped into the centers of the passing dishes. When I learned that my best friend's grandmother made the communion bread for their Methodist church, I was astounded. I couldn't believe that someone would think to take the time to specially make the ingredients for Communion, and as my best friend and I snacked on leftover bread one Sunday after church, I couldn't help but wonder why our church didn't do the same.

Growing up, Communion was an odd mixture of stated solemnity coupled with the casually indifferent. Take this bread. Drink this cup. Remember Me.

Just….remember.

So when I learned that the Catholics understood that they were doing something more than remembering, that they were actually coming into direct contact with the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ Himself, I didn't believe them.

I figured they were making it up. No one could believe that.

Right?

But as I kept reading the writings from the early Church, I realized that this understanding was there from the beginning.

And, if what they understood was True, then I had my answer for "why do I need to bother going to a church?" If Christ Himself were actually there, actually, physically there inside Catholic churches, then that was reason enough for a person to drag their sorry, slothful, sinful butt to church. It wasn't for the Bible readings, or the sermons, or the music, or the fellowship. While I could certainly see where all those things could contribute to a person's spiritual growth, none of them were exclusive to a church setting.

But the Eucharist? That was a Game Changer.

And with that, I did what any sorry, slothful, sinful person would do: I stuck my fingers in my ears and pretended like I couldn't hear anything.

This was late winter, early spring of 2005. The nation was watching the final days of Terry Shiavo unfold, and you couldn't turn on the radio without hearing something about some bishop or other speaking out against the impending death.

I didn't want to hear it. I didn't want to hear anything else about Catholics and their loudmouthed bishops who were sticking their noses into something that, as far as I could tell, didn't even involve them.

Then she died.

Then, three days later, so did Pope John-Paul II.

Ken, Lotus and I were in a Cici's pizza when the news of his death broke. There were TVs mounted all over the ceiling of the restaurant, and even though the sound was off, the news came across on the ticker at the bottom of the screen.

I started to cry.

For a man I didn't know who was the head of a church I didn't want to think about.

I went to the bathroom and tried to get control of myself. What the hell was wrong with me?

Chalking it up to the hormone cocktail courtesy of my 7th month of pregnancy, I went back to finish lunch with my family. But I couldn't shake the sense of overwhelming sadness. Back in the car, on the way home, the news was on the radio, and I teared up again.

The entrance to our neighborhood was directly across the street from- you guessed it- a Catholic church: Queen of Peace Catholic Church, to be exact. I would tell myself that the only reason I even noticed it was because it had a bright turquoise tin roof and who can overlook something like that?

That day, the parking lot, which had been unsettlingly full during the days leading up to the Pope's death, was full to overflowing. Cars were parked all the way down the street, and somehow, the thought of all those Catholics, mourning the loss of their Pope, made me tear up again.

I couldn't get past it. I couldn't get past the feelings of mourning that would come over me in the following days.

One night, not long after, I was on the Internet again, and found myself at a website explaining the Miraculous Medal. Too perplexed by this newest revelation of Catholic oddity to keep my guard up, I accepted the website's offer to send me a free medal.

Whatever. Weirdo Catholics and their weirdo medals and the weirdo claims of miracles and graces for people who wore the stupid things with devout trust in God.

Mumbo to the Jumbo.

I promptly forgot about my momentary lapse in good reason and went to read about Galileo and all the ways the Church hated science and reason.

Oops. Somewhere along the way, I got sidetracked by a list of famous scientists who were priests and all the other scientists the Church had encouraged, cultivated, and supported.

The end date of my second pregnancy sluggishly approaching, I went in to the doctor for a routine checkup. I walked out of the appointment in a complete daze, having learned that the baby was breech, the doctor wouldn't deliver breech babies, and an appointment for a C-section having been scheduled.

I called my mom both sobbing and terrified. In true motherly fashion, she talked me off the ledge, reminding me that a healthy baby was a healthy baby, no matter how he made his entrance into the world, and it was going to be ok as long as I didn't get into a wreck on the way home due to hysterics. I calmed down, agreed with her, and got a hold of myself.

A week or so later, I went to the mailbox and discovered an envelope from the folks at the Miraculous Medal place. Overcome with embarrassment that I'd given them my real name and address, I opened the package. Inside was another envelope, with the words "Blessed Objects Inside" printed in blue ink, for all the world to see. I opened it, and held the oval piece of cheap medal in the palm of my hand for a long while. It was so Catholic.

But right there, front and center, was Mary. The same Mary whose faith and trust I so admired and sought to catch hold of. Ok, Mary. I'll put this on, but only because I want to remind myself to stay as close to Jesus as you did. I'll put this on as a sign of my trust that you'll lead me to the place where I'm going to be closest to Him, ok?

And I put the thing on.

May 31st was the date of my C-section. My mom flew in. I was admitted to the hospital, and sat there miserably, surrounded by Ken, Lotus, my mom, and my mother and father-in-law while I was prepped for surgery. The doctor came in one last time to feel where the baby was, so he could judge where to make the incision. As his hands were on my belly, he shot me an odd look. He left. He came back, wheeling in a machine.

And so we all went to Bob Evans and had breakfast instead of having a C-section.

I didn't immediately connect the incident with the promises of the Miraculous Medal, though I certainly considered it miraculous. I didn't connect my increasing admiration of Catholic theology or my growing attraction for the Eucharist with the promises of the Miraculous Medal, though they certainly were miraculous. It was as if Mary and Pope John-Paul II were some sort of background radiation, praying for me constantly, constantly.

My second child, Joaquin, was born 17 days after the C-section that wasn't.

One day, driving home from somewhere, the baby started fussing. I got into the backseat to soothe him as we pulled into the neighborhood, passing the turquoise roofed Queen of Peace Catholic Church.

Time slowed. I know this sounds ridiculous. But it did. It slowed, and everything around me felt different. The air felt different.

I looked at Ken's eyes, reflected in the rear view mirror.

I opened my mouth to speak.

"So. I think I want to become Catholic." I said. Out of no where. Apropos of absolutely freaking nothing.

Ken glanced at me in the mirror.

"Yeah. Ok." He said.

And we went home.

And eight months later both he and I stood in that turquoise roofed Catholic Church, and receiving Holy Eucharist for the first time, came home.

And there are great patches of missing story here, which I apologize for, because I probably won't come back to fill them in for the time being.

But I want to end here- 2,444 days after I said "I do" to the human love of my life, with me saying "I do" to the Divine love of my life.

Evangelical Convert

Mindy Goorchenko

Mindy Goorchenko is a Catholic convert, mother of five, and nurse in Alaska.

My journey toward Catholicism began when I attended a small, intimate prayer session led by a group of college students in our evangelistic Protestant congregation. The talented young leader guided us in prayer amidst electrifying contemporary worship music. A wave was rippling through our church~~one which may have been present since ever there were youth in a church congregation. These beloved kids invited us old folk to be a part of something deeper, more authentic~~to have a true encounter with the Holy Spirit.

My children were welcome and I brought them along, dubious not so much about my own fate in the area of deep and authentic worship (I knew that it was unlikely I’d give myself wholly to the Spirit while peeking out from one eye at them the entire time) but whether anyone else would be able to with my several young children present. Indeed, as I lifted my own arms in praise of God, my opportunistic six year old immediately reached up and tickled my armpits. This consequently distracted me, and I decided to take my dancing, whooping youngsters out of the room. We played for an hour in the gymnasium at the church~~to simply engage in our vocations called motherhood and childhood.

My heart laid itself bare. How often had I left my children behind so I could experience “authentic worship”? My tendencies bordered on escape at times~~desiring to have my authentic worship happen alone or with others who wouldn’t need me to make them food or change a diaper. Going to church with my children safely tucked away in Sunday school was a wonderful opportunity to get some time with God and~~be free. The freedom for which Christ set us free? (Gal. 5:1) Not exactly. Rather, freedom the way I defined it~~from the daily toil of my housework, chores, and child-rearing responsibilities. From my obligation to maintain a cheerful countenance with my children and husband and to keep my complaining~~and my long-suppressed yet award-winning and formidable skill called sarcasm~~in check.

In short, I had fallen into a mindset that God was there to entertain me, and as my church was also very entertaining, this mindset found a place to flourish each Sunday. I began to doubt whether the answers to my spiritual life would be found so clearly on my own terms~~wrapped up in the heights of a formulated Pentecostal-like experience alongside the rest of the “in-group,” as Henri Nouwen put it. Nor would I find it on the outskirts of my “ordinary” life as a mother and wife.

I began to pray to God in the gym that night, while my children leaped around me like wild banshees, to change my heart. I prayed that I would be able to find Him right there, everyday, alongside those precious charges~~and not just when they were well-behaved. I prayed that I would find Him and love Him through the many small and repetitive acts of my day. I declined to attend the next event and determined to stay at home and find God there instead of falling into that emotional bliss that occurs so effortlessly in the presence of great music and pretending like that was me being close to God.

I don’t want to downplay the reality of the Pentecost~~it did happen, after all, that the Holy Spirit rested upon God’s people, a “violent wind” with “tongues of fire,” rendering them able to speak in tongues and heal people. Nor do I want to be lumped in the category of those who said at the time, “They have had too much wine.” (Acts 2:2, 2:3, 2:13) My experiences with the Holy Spirit have not always been tame and quiet, and I have experienced sudden healings, like deep and undeniable injections of love, which have left me capable of nothing but intense and joyful weeping. My escapist attitude at this event was not the default position of everyone there, I’m sure. Rather, I was questioning seriously whether this “style” of worship, if you will, was the way God was calling me to be with Him at that time.

From that point forward, I began to experience my worship time in our church as emptier and emptier each Sunday. I longed for quietude, to be on my knees in reverence before the Lord, to have silence in which to pray and hear His voice, yet our church was so loud. By the time a space would occur in which to pray, it would be gone again and we would be flooded with the terrific sounds of the band members. I connected my former enjoyment at church with the types of emotions I would have at a musical concert, when everyone experiences emotional communion with one another because of the common appreciation for the song. Yet this was as far away from “authentic” as I could be at the time. The very aspects of our church which had excited us as beginning church-goers were becoming less and less attractive, even while we still enjoyed it on one level.

My desire to kneel received a brief response from God: Catholics kneel.

My response was equally brief, and accompanied by a raised eyebrow. Seriously, God?

I acknowledged there were certainly places to kneel in a Catholic Church, as well as the custom of genuflecting. Each pew has a bench that folds down where one can kneel before the crucifix. I thought that was a little bit strange, kneeling before the crucifix, although it was a hope of mine that I would have something other than a screen with words and graphics on it before me during our church services. If nothing else, it could symbolize Jesus for me and I might be able to render my heart more humble and reverent before the Lord. But just for the record, God, there is no way I’m becoming Catholic. We have a good thing going here. Strong friendships, intelligent and engaging pastors, awesome music. The kids are happy. My own reversal on my dissatisfaction as I pondered the seriousness and reverence of the Catholic environment amused me.

Catholics, as every committed Protestant knows, don’t have it right exactly. They’re too serious, too boring, too routine-oriented. Everything is the same each Sunday. The crucifix hangs down from the front of the church as though that were the final word in the story of redemption. What about the resurrection? What about the Holy Spirit? What about all those repetitive prayers, prayers to the saints and Mary? We are saved by faith alone, and only by faith in Jesus, at that. It shouldn’t take a full year or two to join a religious faith, and it’s rude to deny Communion in the meantime. The priests have no idea what “real” life is like (marriage, sex, and all that messy stuff) and the Pope thinks he’s God. All these protests ran through my head as I opted to attend a midweek Mass at my husband's encouragement. He was raised Catholic and knew that Mass was celebrated every day.

I picked a Wednesday Mass. I showed up. I felt bored. I didn’t understand it. I didn’t know what to say when or how to respond. I didn’t know anybody. The echo was dreadful and I couldn’t hear very well (I have hearing problems anyway). I left halfway through and determined that there was no way I was Catholic or ever going to be Catholic. I let my husband know that, in spite of the many conversations I had had with him while sharing my struggles about our church, I felt certain I was not Catholic and was quite happy to stay at our Protestant church where life was easier, the acoustics better, and the prayer more spontaneous. Deep down, I felt scared that this strange, new life was actually God’s will for me when the current one had been so entertaining and comfortable.

In spite of my fervent intentions, this failed first attempt at Mass did not deter the inner desire, which grew stronger every day. I believed God was calling me to the Holy Catholic Church, and my readings and prayer convinced me that this universal Church was God's desire for Christians. I began to pray daily that God would change my husband’s heart~~he still wasn't entirely on board with my desire to become Catholic and had a lot of reconciliation to do with the Church he had left as a teenager. I gave myself wholly to the prospect that I would convert as soon as he wanted to, God willing. While he agreed with me about all of my concerns with our Protestant church at the time, he didn’t have a compelling interest to return to the church of his childhood that I could see. Yet underneath the surface, God was also acting on his heart to turn it back in that direction. This was a huge grace.

I started to think of myself as a closet Catholic. A friend supplied me with books about the Church, as Catholics did all sorts of downright strange things that I didn’t entirely understand. They prayed to the saints and Mary. They baptized infants. They prayed for the dead. Many of these “strange things” began to make perfect sense, as though my perspective was being systematically changed. My readings confirmed my new understanding rather than the other way around, and my husband and I would have long discussions and pray about it.

But one doctrine, the most audacious of them all, had already been drawing me closer to Catholicism from the time I first learned about it years before, and I was just now beginning to recognize my longing. Transubstantiation pertains to the Eucharist, more commonly known as communion—the eating of bread and drinking of wine in remembrance of Jesus. I remember our initial church service at our Protestant church—my very first as a Christian. “When’s communion?” I whispered to my husband. I learned that this would occur once a month during Sunday services. It involved standing in a circle with other believers and eating a piece of bread dipped in juice. I paid close attention to this monthly event. Eating the bread and juice seemed to serve as symbols, which imparted to us a tiny understanding of what communion in Jesus Christ means. Yet this dissatisfied me from the first time I participated.

A major doctrinal issue between Catholics and Protestants is this belief in transubstantiation. Rather than a symbol, transubstantiation teaches that the consecrated bread and wine during Mass become the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ in actuality. Catholics celebrate this at every Mass and it is professed to be the “sum and summary” of the faith (Catechism 1327). The doctrine has divided Christians since the very time it was instituted. In John’s account of the gospel, after Jesus fed five thousand people with five loaves of bread, He stated,

Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him… On hearing it, many of his disciples said, "This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?"

~~John 6:54-56, 60

Simultaneously, many Jews were arguing “sharply among themselves, [asking] ‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat?’” (John 6:52) Jesus went on to ask them, “Does this offend you? ...The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life.” From that point on, many disciples turned their backs and ceased to follow Him~~hardly the response of those understanding His words to be purely symbolic. I started to see how the Catholic Church holds up the words of Jesus Christ~~the Word of God~~as the Living Truth, the very means by which our redemption occurs in an ever-present and abiding way.

Within a short time of committing in my heart to conversion while hoping to receive my husband’s blessing, he too began to acknowledge more honestly the emptiness that had come to characterize our worship time. The pain of being out of communion with the Lord was too great to make up for the many positive aspects of that church. It no longer mattered to us that the children were so comfortable and that we had strong friendships. The reality was that it had been a long time since we had felt able to worship God there in a meaningful way.

I wept tears onto the floor at the first Mass I attended as a believer~~to be witness to my Savior’s physical presence in my midst finally, face to face. What wonderment to realize I am not genuflecting or kneeling before a wooden model of the crucifix~~it is the true Bread of Life within the Tabernacle Who deserves our reverence and praise. Participating in Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament has been intensely fruitful and my love for Him and relationship with Him has been growing the most during those quiet times of sitting in His presence. I have marveled along the way at how I can believe that He is actually there in the Sacrament~~it defies reason~~and His answer is so simple~~“My Word is true.” It is the gift of faith. He is always with us.

To learn more about Mindy and her ongoing journey in the Catholic Church please visit her blog The Devout Life.

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